Colm O'Regan: We should be mucking about in the woods throughout our lives
Colm O'Regan: In October, the forest floor is a tapestry. Picture: Denis Minihane.
Crows. You absolutely have to hand it to them. They always seem to have a sense of purpose. Watch a crowd of them land in the stubble of a grain or corn field this time of year. It’s business. Pigeons seem flappy. Crows ‘got this’. People talk about starlings and the mesmerising shapes of their murmuration. But they seem aimless, arty-farty. Look at a giant flock of crows, they’re like rush hour. Up to something. With starlings it’s ‘vibes’. With crows it’s the ‘hustle’. Organised.
And they organised themselves right onto a load of acorns we planted in corners of the farm I grew up on. They dug most of them up. We hadn’t protected them properly. It’s like when you leave the car unlocked and your small change is gone. What did we expect?
We’re not disappointed though. A few have survived. And it’s been the most fun autumn in a while. It’s like going back to the nature table in primary school. Out in the woods, foraging.
Much like wandering in the countryside at night, staring at the forest floor feels like exercising muscles in your eyes that you haven’t used for a while. You’re literally looking for food, and soon enough, the ground appears rich and nuanced in colour. It’s no longer just ‘ground’. And it’s no longer just brown.
In October, the forest floor is a tapestry. As well as the leaves, there are the mushrooms which I first of all thought were litter but they were chanterelles and inky caps and wood blewits.
And as you crouch down, sifting – keeping an eye out for dogshite – and start huffing in the antidepressants coming off the soil, you find yourself feeling quite primal. Crouching in the leaf litter, listening. “Redcoats!” I exclaim envisioning two on horseback. “We must warn the village!” Fecking dragoons, never not at it. But I’m transported back to the present as I find a hazelnut and then another. Soon I realise that I’d been walking on hazelnuts the past five minutes. I open up beech husks and look at the nuts for the first time. And then see THEM all over the floor. How is it possible I haven’t noticed them before?
Acorns are rarer. They get snaffled pretty early. Not every tree has an acorn year. I imagine oak trees making Instagram videos saying “Hey guys not doing acorns this year, gonna practice some self-care”. But then we find one. And soon another and after a bit more crouching we have a respectable pile.
But not all might be respectable. You have to test them for soundness. Not to see if they can give you a jumpstart, but to figure out whether they can grow into viable trees. The children huddle around the sink, dropping acorns in the water. If they sink, they’re good; if they float, they’re not viable. Floating means there’s air trapped beneath the pericarp. If anyone feels like inviting me to a dinner party, rest assured I’ll be casually introducing the word “pericarp” into the conversation. I’ll say it with the practised air of someone who has been using it for years — not just a guy who recently learned that there are things surrounding the carp.
The acorns and hazels and a few crab apples are the results of the first year of the rest of our lives. Lives which I want to spend finding things on the ground and putting them somewhere.
It’s a pity we ‘grew out’ of nature tables. They’re often seen as a thing for small children, and they sort of disappear after that. But we should be mucking about in the woods throughout our lives. With the crows laughing at us.
