This week Crimson’s Creative Challenge gives us good vibrations in the woods on Mousehold Heath, just outside the City of Norwich. You get a fabulous view of the city from there.
The beech trees with their mounds and neighbouring paths are reminiscent of those in Epping Forest. This piece draws on my knowledge of both areas. It’s 147 words.
CCC060 – Good Vibrations
The tree stretch languidly as it grew past the shrubs around it. ‘I am Beech’ it affirmed to itself, and felt a rippled approval from other trees on the fungal network. Everything is connected. Rhythmic vibrations suggested a Roman legion on its way. A birch in distant Mercia said it had left her three nights ago, going east. The beech felt the vibrations approach. Apprehensive.
Legions sometimes felled trees for their camps.
It stomped past. Peace returned.
Others passed over the years. Knights to the Crusades. Sheep herded to the weavers of Norwich. Goods to the ports. Then the goods stopped coming, and the beech could feel trembling vibrations from outside the forest, where humans felled trees to make way for roads and housing. So much waste.
But for now, it had peace. And fungi, autumn leaves, squirrels and jays. And passers-by who laughed and played.
© J M Pett 2025
I like the condensed history. Although I notice you skipped over Robert Kett who set his rebel encampment here.
I did, I didn’t know much about him. I also missed the Iceni, although maybe they would have been slightly further south?
I like it—a little reminder of of the antiquity of trees, and what we lose when we cut down the old ones—they aren’t replaced in a few years, even if a fast-growing fir or pine gets tall quickly.
Just above our house, a fragment of old woodland, home to toothwort and owls, now surrounded by new planting, almost up to the fell tops., as the farmers switch from sheep to trees. How will the different generations get on ?