A WALK IN THE WOODS.

A SHORT STORY BY ZOE CLARKE.

Once upon a time in a little wood, in a little quarry, when nobody was there, all the trees came alive. One by one they plucked their roots out of the ground schlupp! Schlupp! And they started moving and dancing around the little glade together! They moved around as Ents (I couldn’t resist a reference to Tolkien) and spoke to each other. All the little creatures that were too shy to come out and play and be seen by humans all appeared after we had gone. All the bunnies hopped around and the squirrels chattered and hopped and jumped from branch to branch and dug up nuts for their dray nests. The spiders span webs in pretty patterns, the birds carried on warbling songs while the buzzards soared effortlessly around in concentric circles above the treetops and herds of deer played chase through the woods around the trees. Later the stars shone brightly over the trees who liked to take walks around in the moonlight when nobody was watching. Sometimes they had tree parties and sang songs to each other. The young sapling trees played games together like who could jump the highest, who could run the fastest, who could spin around without falling over the longest and of course hide and seek around the trunks of the oldest trees who couldn’t move around very much at all anymore, on account of being so old. They had wrinkled bark and big knobbly noses and crooked branches which they could barely hold up at all. The trees sometimes made pets of the bushes which lived in the woods near them. The bushes would go for walks with their tree owners like dogs and run around yapping and biting each other unruly if they weren’t very well trained or were too young to know any better. Rhododendrons were a very popular pet choice for some trees on account of how pretty looking they were in flower. They needed lots of grooming or pruning to stop their shiny coat of leaves getting out of hand and becoming too unruly in the woods. But some trees preferred the prickly holly bushes because of their spikey little characters and happy natures, but you had to be careful not to get too close as they had a nasty habit of nipping trees they didn’t know very well. Some trees didn’t like bushes at all and would rather carry ivy wrapped around their branches instead. It really all depended on the character of the trees. Beaches liked to do hand stands a lot, oaks were more sedentary, ashes were fast and sylph-like, fir trees were rather serious and gloomy in nature whilst Conker trees were the most playful, often having conker fights in the Autumn.

But as soon as the dawn started to appear on the horizon all the trees would make their way back to their homes and place their root feet back in the ground schlup!  Schlup! They finished their chats before the first humans appeared to walk their dogs. The bunnies all ran away and hid and only a few squirrels and birds and sometimes the odd deer could be seen moving through the woods.

So next time you go into the woods think about the trees and their world. Be kind to them and hug them when you can, they like this and it will make you feel good too.