walkout

Left Nr. 98

A bit early, a bit before eleven, and headed east. Got into my car and joined the thick stream of traffic on the ring road, turning towards Brussels on the main highway south. Things went smoothly... Until the bottleneck towards Waterloo, and I decided to bet off at the next exit, not knowing where it would take me. I sort of got lost in suburbia... Noticed that I crossed the highway I was on twice... Still clogged up and anyway no way to rejoin it... Ended up on a boulevard heading towards the former palace of the colonies and decided to pull up and take a walk in the forest... It has been a long time that I've taken the time to take a walk just for the sake of it. In fact it had been some time that I had taken the time, just like that... It wasn't planned, just came about when the message from Unnoticed Art came up on the screen... Ping!  A suggestion to just walk away... Yes why not says I... So, now walking in the Zoniënwoud I came across a cross. 

Two sticks tied together with a bit of string... Reminding us that we are escapees, having cheated death again this day, this night, this moment in which we are obviously still alive. Alive like the mushrooms abounding around, they seemed to spring from everywhere all of a sudden... Only having noticed because I stopped at the cross... A cross in the forest... Reminded me of a cross I lugged all the way to Finland with the intention to plant it somewhere deep in the forest... But in the end brought it back having not even unpacked it... Though it did see quite a bit of action in it's wrapped state anyhow... But this cross seemed improvised... Kids maybe, emulating the wayside crosses along trunk roads where people had lost their lives, inadvertently, on their way to somewhere... lives cut short through folly or misdemeanour... Or just pure bad luck. Here it seemed more of a mystery, a playful mystery... Knowing that there probably was nothing buried at the spot (or perhaps a hamster?) and surmising it had something to do with the construction further along... A forest abode, a skeleton of branches awaiting a cover of leaves, or tarpaulin to make a kind of yurt or flattened teepee... Down in the gully but not entirely out of sight. 

Mushrooms everywhere, and big ones too... Wondering if I should chance it, but deciding not to pick any... Thinking way back when I was young going mushroom picking in a similar autumnal forest armed with a kitchen knife and wicker basket... Wonderful times now receded far away somewhere and only emerging now for this brief moment... What is it, nostalgia? Looking up in wonderment at the huge trees towering above me... Also something that is disappearing, large, old majestic trees... So few and far between nowadays... Hardly anything gets old anymore... Even buildings have become a sort of throwaway commodity surrounded by interchangeable landscapes of roll-on-lawn and potted shrubbery. 

A clump of filigree fungal spores caught my eye... What a strange creature it seemed to be, hovering wispiness there on the forest floor, catching the light briefly... As if alive... And to be sure it was alive, but not in the sense of a small fluffy creature it pretended.. But a colony of interrelating strands like a mesh of communicating spirits all agreed to synthesise this bounty before it's too late.. I think it was horse manure. 

( I hear you thinking 'what a load of horseshit'!)

Admiring the gnarled roots of large trees along the hollow way, considering that strange mix of nostalgic memory and frustration at there being so little regard for nature nowadays even though everyone is talking about it... It seems the more attention is focused on our environment the less efficiently it is protected...

Even here in this public forest large swathes are being cut... For regeneration they say, while making an easy buck on the age old trees being carted off to the sawmill... We really need to rethink fast... Faster than the climate conferences we get served up in the media... Anyway, trying to loosen my thoughts and try even to think of nothing I stumble upon a lake and bench and idyllic scenery with ducks and all that... 

I decide to have a coffee at a place called the spanish house... I guess an old mill or such, here in the middle of nowhere... Left over from bygone times and now part of recreational infrastructure... The spell is broken, I head back to where I left the car and drive to my old haunt at Beersel, where after more than three years the small museum I used to administer stands empty... Left to rot.. A crying shame... Hadn't been there in a while and the autumnal sphere of the abandoned site just made everything more ...

I stop for an apple that had just fallen from it's tree... A wonderfully tasty looking thing that just about flew ito my hands... Only slightly bruised... I take it with me for later on...

My former neighbour, whom I paid a short visit was battling it out with a major attack of chinese ladybugs... It seemed they were confused by the global warming weather to start their spring reconnoitring... Alas, it was late october and with the nights cooling sharply, in for a nasty surprise... 

Highway again, this time towards the south-west... Tournai, Lille I thought,  but exiting early to drive along the old road I used to take with a dear friend who is already dead for what is it... Eighteen years! How time flys and how recent it can seem... Again nostalgia in the low slung sun turning the scenery into a golden haze... At the town of Ath I stopped and entered the train station... Thinking I might just get on a train instead of driving... I have to drive enough as it is and like rather to be driven... And have always been fond of trains... But service has become so meagre that there was no destination in foreseeable time that interested me... So I got back into the car and headed due south... Skirting the castle at Beloeil and turning towards Peruwelz at Basecles, crossing the canal and heading up the hill to the basilique de Bon Secours on the french border...

 

Condé on the banks of the river Schldt in the parc naturelle des plaines de escaut et scarpe, Valenciennes and the tree lined boulevards that already reminded of Paris... well, we've come this far, why not the whole hog? A bit of highway before the peage starts, exit towards St. Quetin, over to le Cateau au Cambresis, where Matisse comes from... Good museum... Down to Laon with its wonderful cathedral perched on top of the world... Further down the Nationale Deux, Soissons, getting dark and one can already see the lights of planes converging on Charles De Gaule... Especially spectacular from the forest of Retz... Getting late... joining the main stream of the autoroute du nord we sail into the porte de clignotante as if nothing were more natural...  Naw, just kidding... Turned back and spent the night at Peruwelz before heading home next morning.