http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0131-26.htmA few days ago, after a furious argument, I was thrown out of a forest where I have walked for more than 20 years. I must admit that I did not behave very well. As I walked away I did something I haven't done for a long time: I gave the gamekeeper a one-fingered salute. In my defense, I would plead that I was overcome with unhappiness and anger.
The time I have spent in those woods must amount to months. Every autumn I would spend days there, watching the turning colors or grubbing for mushrooms and beechmast and knapped flints. In the summer I would look for warblers and redstarts. I saw a nightjar there once. It is one of the few peaceful and beautiful places in my part of the world that's within a couple of miles of a station: I could escape from the traffic without the help of a car. Part of me, I feel, belongs there. Or it did.
It is not that I wasn't trespassing before. Nor has the status of the land changed: it is still owned, as far as I know, by the same private estate. No one tried to stop me in those 20-odd years because no one was there. But now there is a blue plastic barrel every 50 metres, and the surrounding fields are planted with millet and maize. The wood has been turned into a pheasant run. Having scarcely figured in the landowner's books, it must now be making him a fortune. And I am perceived as a threat.
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