Not talking to trees...

Take any lane in our bit of North Wales and you are sure to end up finding something that you didn’t expect to come across. Beaches, mountains, churches, stones, cliffs, rivers and streams, bogs, islands, cottages, and of course flock after flock of sheep. They are all there to startle as you round the bend or climb to the top of that rise.

Today it was trees, but what trees - a line of windswept, angled, warriors, clinging to the side of the mountain waiting for the battle of spring to commence - old hands at it by the size and shape of them. As I walked past and under their leaf bare boughs, following the twisting lane they border to the lake below, I’m sure they watched me as I passed – and for a few seconds talked to me, whispering of things past and things yet to be, unsettling me as I moved across the deep blue silhouettes of their shadows and making me shiver.

I didn't reply, just hurried on pretending that I hadn't heard them. I always do when things try to speak to me.

Unforgiving, unforgiven, and honest as salt - that’s the way of the trees in our bit of North Wales.