| Dragonflies and the Rat Man (part two)
Sitting on the wall by the Great pond still, the memories of that day run out on me. I decide to get up and make my way down the path to see if I can track the young woman who had spoke to me.
Her small boot tracks are instantly visible by the freshness of the print she made. It seems that she had come from the direction of the road, taking the path that runs parallel to the Quiet path, which I call the Green path. Her tracks are very obvious in the soft mud of the tractor ruts on this path, and it is easy for me to follow them. This I do for a short distance down the path, but soon I lose interest as I have a good idea of where they will lead.
Leaving the tracks behind, I cut off into the larches to see what I may find there. The air is very peaceful in this part of the woods, not many birds frequent the coniferous trees here, and so it can become very quiet. I notice this silence and feel that there is nothing else I would rather do than to sit down at the foot of a tree, and be still for a while. Dropping my hat at the foot of a tree, I slowly sit down in order to close my eyes from weariness, and focus on what sounds can be heard, and pay attention to how far away they are.
Leaning back against the smooth trunk, the sound I hear most often is the woodpigeons in the big oak behind me. They fly to and fro to this tree, often in flocks and often they are heard when something disturbs them. Then they all bail out from the top of the tall oak. The whispering sound of their wings I hear now and then, and the clatter they make as their wings clip the branches in their rush through the larches. Sometimes a yaffle is heard, its laughing call echoes well in the woods. By the way its voice sounds on the still air, it is flying low in the wood as it calls, though out of sight, it is very near. Often the quiet pipping of the coal tits can be heard high in the larches.
A big engine I can hear in the direction of the road, it gets louder as it gets nearer to me. I cannot see through the brush and trees, but I can follow where it is by the noise. Presently the engine slows down to a rather high idle, I have a good idea it is the tractor that comes down the Green path. The tractor is stationary now, and the driver will be opening the gate in order to drive down the Green path. The driver then pulls through the gate and the bumps on the path make it clear he has a trailer in tow as the sound of the metal tail-gate hits against the sides. Bringing the engine up to a steady speed now, the blue tractor soon comes into view, but only in glimpses as I see it from the ground through the dying bracken and the mist of the lower dead, larch branches. It is an old ford. It passes me a distance of about 150 yards, and then carries on to the end of the Green path, and then turns right onto the stony path that leads round by the Great pond. I realize now that this is the tractor that makes all the ruts around this area, and this must be the man that comes to the part of the wood where there has been a bit of forestry work going on of late. So that is who has been working there, I think to myself.
The sound of the tractor engine dies away, and there is natural silence again. But soon a chainsaw starts buzzing away over the other side of the pond. It does not disturb me, but looking to my right through the bare branches, I see the sun is getting low, and the air has been getting cooler. It is time I headed back.
I make my way down the Quiet path and on past the entrance to the Green path. Here I pick up the tractor tracks and follow them, as they lie on my route anyway. I notice their age and the subtle signs that go to make up the whole passing of the tractor. The wide back wheels sometimes are too big for the path in places, and they rub large stones out of the sandy cliff here and there, leaving them on the path looking stranded and out of place. Over hanging trees and bushes get a good beating from the coming and going of the tractor as the cab and trailer sides bend them to spring back in the passing, and of course, any areas of grass on the pathways get reshaped and churned somewhat by the weight of the tractor.
On coming up the path through the meadow I can hear the chainsaw much louder ahead as the path dives into the wood. I am going to be walking right past, quite near to the man cutting through the trunk. This is a trunk that he cuts through, even though I cannot see him, I know by the way the revving of the chainsaw sounds. The muffled tones of the engine as the chain is buried in the trunk, working away at it, makes distinct sounds, much different from the sound of the chainsaw being used to cut branches up. Just then I see the man working at the trunk as I enter the wood. He has an orange hard hat on, the style that tree surgeons often wear, and he is cutting away at the fallen oak trunk that lies parallel to the path at seventy yards away from the point where I will pass him. He is facing in my direction, I pass him slowly while he is busy buzzing away. I suddenly realize that I have seen his face before, it is the Rat Man. So that is who it is, who comes here to chop the wood up. And the tractor, I should have recognised it as his, since I have passed by it so many times on my wanderings where it is parked outside his sheds.
The Rat Man is so called because he has a pet hate for rats. He is not a rat catcher by trade but he catches them often. He mainly deals in timber for his living, and probably gets by any other way that is easy for him, as it is true, he must be in his eighties now. He lives on the other side of the road at the end of the Green path. A public right of way runs down along his driveway and past his house and garden on the left, and his sheds and timber stacks on the right. It was on his drive that I first met the Rat Man one snowy, white winter day four years ago. I turned onto the driveway heading towards the stream in the woods, crunching my way along on the brittle ice beneath my boots, when I saw the Rat Man in his front garden pruning a fruit tree. He greeted me remarking that is was a lovely day, I agreed enthusiastically and he then asked me what the roads were like in this weather. I told him they were easy to travel with care, and then we got talking on various subjects, mainly to do with nature and the countryside. He mentioned how there are a lot of rats around his property, and he told me that he sets traps for them in the drainage ditch that runs along the drive. I was keen to hear what he had to say on many subjects, so we talked for quite some time in the snow. After a while he told me that he was cold now, as if to say I shouldn’t have kept him talking there for so long, and said that he better get back to his work.
The Rat Man wears a woolly hat without a bobble often. His clothes are old, but not worn out He wears big hob-nail boots, for he is a big man - not so much broad but tall. But the most distinguishing feature of the Rat Man is his voice. It is rather high, and the brightness of its tone is dim. It has no penetrating edge to it but still can be heard from a distance. Such a uniqueness of sound is vastly different from any man I have heard speak before.
I always look forward to seeing him when I pass his house, but often he is not there. Either he is out, or his is busy at the back of the sheds. Often, when I walk down this driveway, that is beautiful and green on either side, laying among the ragged robin in the verge, there can be seen a dead rat, flung out across from the ditch on the other side of the drive, where he had emptied the trap in the early morning. A smile comes to my face on seeing this, for this is a part of the character of the man.
Seeing the Rat Man’s face as I walk by, he appears to be laughing at me while sawing at the trunk. But in reality he does not even notice me, the wide smile he wears is in fact a grimace, distorted by wrinkles and distance, as he tenses through the duration of the cut, and squints in an effort to defend his eyes from the stray specks of sawdust. It is early evening now, and I leave the Rat Man behind me and head off on my way.
From Woodlandguy  |
Linear Mode
