I gave myself a day in the library today - a real treat, even if I kept swerving off into admin mode. And I managed to fill in some important bits of material and thinking, so that was a definite plus. The plants at the Huntington are in that late summer phase of looking grey, and a little tired - but there are some amazing bursts of color (I didn't penetrate very far into the gardens, today, however - too busy contemplating the decline of the English tree-barking industry in the mid 1880s).
And I was horribly preoccupied, and saddened, by the loss of the tree in the Sycamore Gap. Loss? More like murder, or arboricide. Who would do that? Why? It was more deliberate, more planned, more callous than mere vandalism. My memories of it go back a long way - although I can't find an actual photo with it in, I promise you that it was a few hundred yards away from here ... The saddest thing: when I went to try and place this in relation to it using the map, I found that the on-line maps have already been updated to read "Sycamore Stump."
My hillwalking started young. I now wear hiking boots ...
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