Leaf Litter by William Rowlandson

I ran along the slender bendy footpath through the trees, racing the gaggle of kids to the clearing. Round the last bend at the chestnut coppice and burst upon a nightmare of crap. Cans, boxes, bottles, barbecue trays, a coat, a boot, chocolate bar wrappers, biscuit wrappers, crisp wrappers, sweet wrappers, wrapper wrappers, wrapper-wrapper-wrappers…

Synthetic reds and yellows and blues against the dun sod, crumpled shiny silver, in ever-widening rings around the fire-pit. Blackened crumpled cans. Nuggets of melted plastic, mangled by heat. Fag ends.

Panting from the run, open-mouthed, aghast, we moseyed around the clearing. ‘Eeeoooooww. That’s disgusting… Yuk!’

Ok – so I imagine the woodland authorities know about this. Maybe someone’s told them. Maybe they’ll send someone to clear it. Maybe Men-From-The-Council will come and clear it. Maybe…

Maybe not…

Maybe us…

Maybe we could clear it…

What do you say, guys. Hey! What do you say? Shall we do it? Let’s do it! Let’s clear it! Let’s do it now. Look, the sleeping bag. We can fill it. We can totally fill it with all this stuff. And those plastic bags – Bags for Life! – whose life? – we can fill them too. What do you say? Let’s tidy this place up. Shall we? Yes! Let’s do it!

…Ok. Here, take this bag – fill it! And this bag. I need the rest of you to grab anything you see – crisp packet, can or bottle or whatever – and throw it here at the firepit. I’ll load it into the sleeping bag. If there’s broken glass, or anything nasty, like a dog poo bag, just leave it. I’ll get it. Ok guys – let’s go!

Energetic order-disorder. One girl, crouching low by the fireside logs, gathered just bottle tops and cigarette butts. A lad wandered way off beyond the clearing, plucking plastic from branches and bushes. Some chucked their pickings at the centre. Others pushed them into the sleeping bag.

Bit by crappy bit the sleeping bag swelled. The kids were enthusiastic, energised. They were enjoying it.

We were now scanning for remainders, kicking up stuff left over from weeks, months, years ago. Wrapper, bottle-top, battery, tent peg, soggy sock. I picked through the firepit with blackened hands, retrieving twisted lumps of hard yellow plastic that once was a skip lamp.

I sighed, and felt the woodland sigh…

Anything else? One last run-around everyone! Some meagre pickings. Into the sleeping bag!

We gathered around the dirty bulging sleeping bag. It squirmed. Stuffed. Gorged. Glutted. Bursting. I pulled the drawstring and dragged the heavy hungry ghost out of the clearing.

We stood by the firepit and I splashed water on grimy hands and we gazed with wide smiles and wet grubby fingers.

What transformation.

I sighed, and felt the woodland sigh…

The eldest lad and his brother dragged the sleeping bag all the way back to car park, leaving in a snaky trail along the path, determined not to let me help, and dumped it triumphantly by the bin in the car park, rubbing grimy hands on their trousers. We stomped home.

I sighed, and felt the woodland sigh…

I’ve filled more sleeping bags with rubbish since then. I’ve been digging deeper in long, solitary, and immensely satisfying woodland litterpicks. I’ve been taking litterpicks to another level. Over many months I headed out early in the morning with bike and trailer to clear a nearby woodland, filling the trailer with bottles, jars, cans, coats, trousers, boots, disintegrated plastic bags, crisp wrappers and tobacco packets. Yards of muddy carpet. Tarpaulins. Mattresses. Cushions. Office chairs. Cable cladding. A fridge. I’ve hauled a fucking fridge from the woods. Someone must have hauled the fridge into the woods. What effort…

Deep digging is deep reckoning with the wild.

As I tug an old tent out of the leaf litter, mulch and mud, I wonder whether by now it might be best to leave it be. There’s moss on the flysheet, mould on the fabric, worms in the clumps of mud that stick to the blue tarp.

Birds are lining their nests with the polyester stuffing of the burst pillow.

By tugging out some carpet I disturbed a mouse with a clutch of tiny babies. I felt dreadful, and slowly replaced the carpet and tiptoed away.

It’s not really about the woodland. The woodland can handle this shit – in fact, the woodland is pretty good at getting rid of this shit – now that it’s here. The woodland houses critters who’ll be cool with this. Badger doesn’t stop on midnight rumble-rambles to gaze at the suitcase and curse the humans who dumped it. Badger sniffs around for anything interesting then passes on, thinking other stuff. The fungi are not deliberating over whether the material is natural or synthetic. Tent and sleeping bag are just different environments from bark or root. Tougher environments for some fungi – hence their absence – richer environments for others – hence their presence. Engage biochemical processes. That is all.

Fuck it! Leave it all here. Why shift a load of plastic from one place to another? The wild will get to work on it. Why not let the process unroll here? In time all this plastic will be mulch. It is already mulchy.

So no, it’s not for the woodland.

But it is for the woodland. I have felt that sigh…

It’s my sigh, which I’m projecting across the woodland.

That’s fine. My sigh of satisfaction. I love that feeling.

It is, I guess, a sense of virtue. Something good accomplished. Something wholesome, enriching, which nevertheless makes me question its wholesomeness by seeing little black mousey eyes blinking at me, and my presence as another disturber, wrecking their snug little home. But wholesome nevertheless…

Yes – I haul plastic out of woodlands for me, not for the woodland, because I am happier in a woodland free of plastic. It’s good exercise out in the fresh morning air. Other people go to the gym. The act of removing the crap is satisfying and I am happy to share that satisfaction with the dog-walkers who stumble across me lugging a mouldy armchair onto the path, or the students in the laundry room who glance up from their phones and watch me pitching the mess of slimy tent and broken poles into the big wheelie bin.

But I’m sorry about the mice. Poor little fellas. I hope they survived.

It’s not for the woodland, it’s for me. But it is for the woodland. I have felt that sigh even if it is my sigh projected…

A woodland less tawdry. With the tents and bags gone the woodland looks lovely. It looks more lovely than it did with the tents and bags.

But that’s my vision of the woodland. Not Badger’s or the mice or the fungi. It’s not really about the woodland or the woodland creatures. It’s about me.

Fair enough, but I have felt that sigh…

It is about the woodland. It is about me. I’m increasingly entangled in the woodland and the woodland entangled in me. My boundaries wilded with the wilded woodland boundaries.

And that is where the pain is. Like a medic in a war, patching up the wounded to patch up the wounded to patch up the wounded, I pick up the litter with a sad reckoning that the woodland will soon be filled again with all this shit.

And anyway, I’m simply shifting shit from one place to another. These broken tents and grimy plastic bottles will now rot down in the landfill, where I will never go with my bike trailer, where nobody ever litterpicks. The great oubliette…

And the thousands of woodlands full of shit. The thousands of woodlands destroyed. The creatures who call this woodland home turfed out when the yellow machines arrive, like the Lorax’s Swomee-Swans when the Once-Ler arrives. The faded crisp wrapper, spilling brown leafy water, is nothing compared with the wastelands behind the chainsaws. The open mud and mangled roots and metal fences and angry men in yellow coats and hard hats and the monster yellow diggers. One shitty little crisp wrapper beneath a beech hedge compared with vast swathes of beech hedge bulldozed. Fuck the crisp wrapper. Stop the bulldozers.

I’m trying to stop the bulldozers. Campaigning locally to stop the landscalping and woodland felling. Working with groups and gatherings and panels and partnerships and associations and assemblies and alliances and businesses and networks and campaigns and Working Groups and Steering Groups and Advisory Groups – and even a rebel Picnic Society. Responding to planning applications and consultations and surveys and petitions. Dull online meetings. Lively village hall meetings. Walks and workshops. Singing songs in fields earmarked for destruction. Drumming beneath a banner. Guerrilla tree planting. Alerting the press. Writing to council officers. Meeting with councillors. Contacting the MP. Community gardening. Tree-planting. Hedge-planting. Group litter picks. Solitary morning litter picks. Protect the mulch. The mulch protects us!

One shitty little crisp wrapper beneath a beech hedge, spilling brown mulchy water, is insignificant and yet hugely significant. The tiny Kentish brook that gurgles in winter and dries into pools in late summer as wide as the Orinoco. Shifting levels. Shifting scales. Shifting fields of focus. Shifting values. Wilding, inwilding, rewilding.

Perhaps each crushed can and blackened bottle shard from the damp fire-pit counterposes the chainsaws and yellow monsters in another woodland.

Perhaps a penance of sorts. Lady Macbeth compulsively washing her hands. Perhaps by hauling sodden mattresses I can redeem myself. Redeem myself of what? Of being part of this shit strewn in the woodland. Of carting it off to have it strewn in another place.

Redemption? Am I a plague flagellant thrusting bare skin through nettles and brambles to unpick a dangling dogpoo bag? A hedgerow penitent smearing my hands with junk-juice, skank-seeking, rubbish-rummaging? A bloody pilgrim straining up the hill in the lowest gear with the trailer wobbling with detritus – leafy litter yanked from the leaf litter. Perhaps a plea for forgiveness as I heave it into the big bin.

Atonement? Is there ever atonement? At at-one-ment? Yes, onement with the woodland. At one.

So it’s not for the woodland. It’s for me. It is for the woodland. I did feel the woodland sigh… I am the woodland, living and thrusting, breaking and healing, besmirched, plastic-ridden, tangled and entangled.

Is this my mulchy redemption?

***

William Rowlandson is a native of Salisbury Plain, and a twenty-year resident of Canterbury. He spends his time, when not working at the University of Kent (in fact, whilst working at the University) cycling the lanes of East Kent, walking in the woods, hugging trees, leading others on woodland walks and encouraging others to hug trees. This is an extract from his forthcoming book Wyld of the Woodling, a wayward pilgrimage across the Canterbury landscape inspired by the post-apocalyptic novel Riddley Walker.

The artwork is by ælfthryth, an elf from Canterbury and an illustrator and illuminator of manuscripts, including Wyld of the Woodling. Accredited level꩜  portal technician, dog frendy. Read more.