Item 04: G. O. Hawkins letters to his family, 2 January 1915-November 1917 - Page 131
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[Page 131]
10
And where there is the smell of moss; of decaying wood; and of moldering leaf and bracken; and brittle dead pine needles.
Here and there, jutting above the matted floor, between the standing trees, are low stumps, the only indications of a past growth thinned out by the woodmans axe, maybe years ago. These are soft with decay and seemed over with mildew and moss. One by one they are moldering away.
Leaving deep nest-like holes where the drifting rubbish of leaves is swept by the old dame of the winds, whoes duty it is to keep the carpet in order; and where the creeping life of the insect world finds snug shelter and protection.
In the mingled scents of foliage and bark, and the smell of moss and decay, which the pine wood breathes there is something subtle and alluring.
And something of exhilaration and freedom faintly shadowed with an inner rouse of peculiar loss and melancholy, nowhere else quite so expressed in nature, yet almost