Birch coming into leaf, Craigellachie National Nature Reserve, Strathspey
The birch wood started coming into leaf during the recent amazing spring weather. Its always a joy to see the transformation over a few days from coppery winter branches to the bright yellow-green of the new leaves. The mix of colours is lovely to see, with the copper and purple of the still-bare trees mixing in with the fresh greens. I photographed them here backlit by the sinking sun, against the dark shade of the crags behind.
“To our indigenous ancestors, and to the many aboriginal peoples who still hold fast to their oral traditions, language is less a human possession than it is a property of the animate earth itself, an expressive, telluric power in which we, along with the coyotes and the crickets, all participate. Each creature enacts this expressive magic in its own manner, the honeybee with its waggle dance no less than a bellicose, harrumphing sea lion.
Nor is this power restricted solely to animals. The whispered hush of the uncut grasses at dawn, the plaintive moan of trunks rubbing against one another in the deep woods, or the laughter of birch leaves as the wind gusts through their branches all bear a thicket of many-layered meanings for those who listen carefully. “
– David Abram ‘Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology’