One agnostic went on a journey that tested his beliefs. Or the lack of them. Recently, Gawan Mac Greigair has bought an Ordnance Survey (national mapping agency in the United Kingdom) hiking map, and found a place of worship symbol in the “middle of bloody nowhere.” Wondering what that particular one actually was, he decided to see for himself.
“I’m always moved by old woodbanks, knowing that they’ve acted as boundaries for centuries, and this wood was bounded by one, topped with spaghetti beeches and hornbeams”
“The first section of wood was dominated by hazel coppice, which I feel I don’t encounter very often. I always imagine hazel as a friendly tree, which is just as well in this very Poe fog”
“I came to my first turn, I had to turn right, at a right angle, on reaching this flooded track”
“But the experience of the woodland in this dense fog was a joy – the everyday took on an entirely different presence”
“I came across a sudden steep hollow. It seemed unmarked by any horsehoe of close contour lines on the OS map, so this is when I first started to suspect that I’d lost my way”
“By the hollow, this old tree was simultaneously living and dead – a termite metropolis nevertheless sprouting fresh young limbs”
“I checked my map again. Three sides of a squarish rectangle was my route. Two right angled turns to the right. Just past the hollow a muddy but confident track went fogward at 90 degrees. This must be my second turn. I must be pretty close”
“Two pairs of beeches waltzed with each other alongside the track, as two birches stood by, waiting for their chance to cut in”
“Last year’s beech leaves were still clinging on to saplings in the understory, where the winter winds weren’t able to dislodge them. A strange bright confetti in the murk”
“But this side of my square route was getting absurdly long, it didn’t make sense any more. This imperious beech appeared to give me directions, but I couldn’t interpret its gestures and I don’t speak beech”
“Primroses cheered me on though, urging me not to panic. Thanks guys, you’re the best”
“I decided to take the next obvious right and hope for the best. It took me through a recent coppice, where the felling had exposed another monumental beech (a very unusual standard tree in a coppice, where oak is much more usual”
“I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for – a recognisable structure, a hollow overgrown by hornbeam? But suddenly the hairs on my neck stood up and I realized I was already looking at it”
“Just the suggestion of a gable, an echo of a spire, materialising surely with each step forward”
“It wasn’t the heap of stones I’d half expected, but a tiny, living church that seemed to transpirate from the wood that it was nested in”
“I found it was open”
“I find it hard to state this without hugging myself and clapping my hands in childish glee, but this church has no electricity and is still lit by working gas lamps”
“The fog seemed to press its nose to the windows”
“But it was held at bay by the colours inside”
“I’m not a believer in heaven, but I appreciate the notion of places where other forms of reality become tangible, where past and present interlace”
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