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On the edge of the Weald

The ridge above the Weald To live on the edge of a forest is to live by a path into dream, or childhood; when you were small and the legs of adults were like trees and their heads rustled with words, when the sky was oily and flowed and sparkled. Just as we can easily conjure up the face of a grimacing wolf, staring at us from a dark window, eyes wide, teeth bared; just as we can sense against our midriff the whispered ripple of a shark in water; we enter a forest. What remains of our own Weald was once the scrubby border of the great temperate northern European Forest. Those of us who were brought up in Britain, and who have read enough and completed a Grand Tour will overestimate our imaginative ability, supposing we can picture this Ur forest properly. We can't, but what we can do is sense the Weald and its Silesian heart in the stories of the Grimm brothers, in older fairy tales. Forest boys and girls live in a the middle of Europe, in fairy tales. Just ask Carole J