The road was better washed today and the sky held on to remnants of water vapour. Clouds in thin slabs like broken paving mixed with smoke and a distant, sun-lit topping of cotton-wool. After I entered the trees the sun broke over the slabs and showed bare boughs, with just a few terminal leaves left on the birches. The thick carpets of discards glittered with wet gold, heaped with rust, sprinkled with crushed cinnamon.
The managed heath, where heather and gorse has been cut this year, lies like a mohair camel blanket. Grass flower stems are the fine whiskers and the autumn sward the fabric. This superficial appearance deceives. In detail the ecosystem is more fractal; giving equal detail at all visible levels of magnification. Amongst the grass: herbs, moss, lichen, the tiny resurgent heathland weeds and critters from mites to small mammals and amphibians roam.
Red deer were the morning's highlight, five crossing, relaxed; a stag and four hinds. The stag stood in the road and regarded me for a few seconds. I returned the favour.
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