In The Green Room

We found the yew wood (Reenadinna Wood), after wandering about the grounds of Muckross House for maybe half an hour, getting wrong directions from the gardener (I think he confused right with left), doubling back on our tracks eventually and meeting for the second time a flushed, eager, shiny-domed, moustached young American who had just come from there, though he hadn't heard of it till we'd told him. He warned us that the lakeside path to it had flooded but said it was worth getting his feet wet. And it was, though Dave had to convince me (and the water was *cold*, the gravel sharp).

We had to duck under a wire fence and then we were in it. And it was definitely an interior, though the canopy wasn't thick at the fringes, which was as far as we ventured.

The rain came through in diaphanous little drifts, like a restless tenant. Wind lifted the Maidenhair ferns and set the boughs creaking, a house full of opening doors. But the dominant movement was silence: thick, mossy and as old as one might like to imagine, possibly even as old as what used to clothe and soundproof most of this country.

I tried to imagine what camping here might be like: seeing the darkness thicken between the trunks, turning in for the night, zipping your tent and trying to sleep in that deep-pocketed little patch of wilderness. I'd be able to do it with one or two friends, but not with only my imagination for company.