A WOOD IN WINTER
ILLUSTRATOR ALICE STEVENSON DISCOVERS CURIOUS
PLACES AND SURPRISING PERSPECTIVES ON HER TRAVELS,
EXPLORING WONDERLANDS WITH AN ARTIST’S EYEme to exa m ine my sur rounding s more ca ref ully.
A m ile or so dow n t he road nea r Dead Woma n’s Ditch,
I leave the footpath to enter the wood. The skinny oak’s
branches twist upwards like beseeching arms, pointed
and contorted. Their shadow, which lies across the
wood’s carpet of moss and twigs, is a blurred and less
precise echo of their form, as if rendered inexpertly
with too large a brush. The poor soil in this part of the
Quantock Hills means that although these trees are old,
they cannot grow wide and high, resulting in their
awkward, deformed appearance. I encounter a tree
that has managed to develop more substantially despite
these obstacles, its outer layer of bark is absent from
much of its trunk and branches of smaller oaks areW
alking through the village of
Crowcombe in Somerset, I
notice arbitrary details that
adorn the surfaces of its
buildings: a square area on
a cottage wall that remains
un-plastered so the texture of bricks comes through its
pink paintwork, and above this area two wooden Xs,
which emerge, in semi-relief through the paintwork.
I pass a shed where ivy has been ripped away from
the whitewash, leaving graphic, vein-like brown
impressions across its facade.
It is a bitterly cold early February afternoon and
the season’s dearth of natural allure has prompted