The Motorway Forest

Here, where the motorway cuts through the ancient hill, where empty bottles, cans and debris lie – a shredded tyre, a baby’s nappy, a lost earring gleaming in the parched grass – here I will fashion a forest of oak trees. Here, where today the noise of traffic is as loud as a swollen river, where toxic fumes belch into the humid air and the verge is bloodied with the entrails of badgers, foxes and voles, I will stitch a thousand lichens, weave patterns into bark and sprout saplings from fallen acorns. Overnight these slender saplings will grow into immense forest. Tomorrow wrens will rustle in the verge’s undergrowth, a colony of ants will build a nest where the hard shoulder now stands and a giant oak will root itself into the middle lane, from where the owl’s eye will survey its domain. Tomorrow you will see twisted branches arching their way across the tarmac, moles burrowing under the cat’s eyes and a fox slinking along the rusted crash barrier. Tomorrow there will be a soft greening; the old made new again; the big silence.

by Bronwen Griffiths