LITMIR.BIZ

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cliff face on the eastern boundary and dry-stone walls to the west where it joins the meadows and pastures.

      I hoist myself up the rocks and crouch at the top to take in my surroundings. Lime-coloured lichen glows on every surface, giving the undergrowth an unnatural brightness. I stroke its lustrous coat, which has the texture of seaweed. It has spread its thick fronds over tree roots and rocks alike, muffling sound and disguising grikes, or fissures, which can be as much as three metres deep. Time seems suspended. Lambs bleat, admonished by the deeper voices of their parent ewes, but they seem far away.

      The older trees are quite well spaced so plenty of light filters through the gaps and the rich flora can flourish. There are clusters of yellow primroses on the woodland floor, and galaxies of star-like white wood anemones. New ferns are curled tight, ready to open; the relatively rare limestone Polypody Fern grows here, its fine fronds waving above the rocks. When I lie on my belly and look down a grike, it is dark and fusty: the air of a tomb. There is humidity in the undergrowth: moisture retained in the earth beneath the stone.

      Sheltered by the soft hump of Park Fell, the ashwood is a marvel of survival: its many common ashes are stunted like bonsai. Elsewhere, the common ash grows fast but on this open escarpment it does battle against the elements every day. Ashes often thrive on alkaline soil but, when measured, the trees show slow growth in girth and height in comparison with most ash trees. Average wind speed at ten metres from the ground is approximately 11 m.p.h. here, and a gale-force wind blows through on around ten days of the year. Consequently, the trees have worked hard to stay upright and grow. Their roots are sunk into the gaps between the rocks, hidden from view until you draw close enough to peer into the underground cavern beneath the limestone that supports the wood. Severe environmental conditions may have a detrimental effect on the trees’ survival: the Colt Park tree survey, completed in 1989, shows that over thirty years, thirty trees had died. Such change within any woodland is normal, where storms, localized cankers and other bacteria can cause death in the occasional tree, but the arrival of Ash Dieback will devastate this ancient woodland.

      The odd hazel or alder adds variety. It is known that the ash trees in Colt Park have a shorter life than common ash elsewhere in the UK, probably due to the adverse conditions of their habitat. Also, the life span of ashes in other areas is often extended by coppicing and pollarding. Like coppicing, pollarding is a pruning technique, but it is carried out higher up the tree, while coppicing occurs close to the ground.

      Some of the trees are bent away from the wind, branches outstretched, as if to balance themselves. I step from stone to stone until, suddenly, my left leg slips down a grike. If I had twisted at the same time, I would almost certainly have broken it. This is no place for children or dogs, and you shouldn’t venture here without telling someone: they can send out a search party if you don’t return. Fortunately, I’m with my friend. Pausing to recover, I find myself at eye level with an Early Purple Orchid; at first glance I might take it for a bluebell but it is paler pink and each flower has delicate flaps of petals and a pointed spur. Its long leaves are covered with characteristic dark blotches. It is a rare flower that clearly thrives under the light canopy of ash.

      The oldest trees are twisted, their long boughs, like winding tentacles, hovering protectively over the skinny saplings. Variegated mosses of mustard and lime hug the paving, softening the grikes and masking the deep clefts and sharp edges. From the corner of my eye, I fancy I see a holy man in a flowing robe bending to pick herbs. He bears a striking resemblance to Odin, with a long beard and unkempt hair. Odin, or Woden as the Anglo-Saxons knew him, had a habit of appearing among trees. In his book Odin: The Origins, History and Evolution of the Norse God, Jesse Harasta claims: ‘He was a wanderer who appeared when least expected, bringing triumph or doom.’

      The deep clefts between the rocks would be almost as effective as quicksand in killing unsuspecting walkers. Colin Newlands tells me that once at Scar Close, a nearby wood, he saw a red head lying at an odd angle on the woodland floor. For a moment he thought it was human but as he drew closer he discovered that a roe deer had fallen between the rocks and died.

      Nearby I notice a makeshift wall of large limestone slabs. It would have been built centuries ago to keep livestock out of danger. Some slabs have fallen away and the rest have slipped into a zigzag pattern, each layer at an angle to the one below, so that they form a line of marching stone gnomes. The militaristic stance of the stone soldiers reminds me of the many armies that must have passed through or near to the wood: the Viking army, which overwintered near here during the late tenth century, the Scots raiders, during the Scottish Wars of Independence from 1286 to 1328, and Henry VIII’s army, sent to destroy Furness Abbey during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537.

      Colt Park Wood would have made the perfect trap for disabling the warring Scots who came to plunder Yorkshire villages and farmsteads. There are tales of Dalesmen building rows of cairns to ward off the invaders, but the ashwood would have provided the invaders with shelter. Perhaps some wouldn’t have come out alive, though, thereby buying time for villagers to pack up and flee.

      In 1950 the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had classed Colt Park as an area of good grazing for a variety of livestock, so the animals were free to roam, and until 1962 the southern end of the wood was a working part of the Colt Park Estate. Sheep have many reasons to be grateful to the ash, were they capable of gratitude. They huddle under the limestone bracelet when the wind is wuthering, because they know the top end of the field is warmer near the trees. The trees provided shelter from rain, ice and snow, protecting them from blizzards and extremes of temperature; in summer they offered relief from the sun’s heat. The middle of the wood was finally closed to sheep in 1964, to preserve delicate and rare flora. The margins were mown for hay, which might explain why the mosses give way here to tough grasses. Generations of sheep from the same flock are shown their own grazing ground by their mothers and always return to the same spots. The grikes are not as frequent or as wide here, and there are fewer trees, probably because the sheep chewed them to the level of the pavement.

      A large slab sits upright on the edge of the wood. It has an oval top in the shape of a rough-hewn headstone and to me it is a memorial to all the human and animal lives that may have been lost in the treacherous stone traps. I sit on a rock nearby to contemplate what might be found if the ash trees of Colt Park die. The fetid space beneath the suspended pavements contains thousands of years of forgotten history: an ancient natural graveyard, perhaps, containing the bones of unsuspecting Scots clansmen who fell to their deaths all those years ago, and of the sheep, cattle, deer, pigs and rabbits, which foraged here. There may even be evidence of occupation by the aurochs, an ancestor of cattle, extinct since the seventeenth century.

      In the huge barn where the wardens work, they have a small study centre with tables and chairs for school groups and carefully stored exhibits in plastic containers. Here, Colin unpacks the femur bones of an aurochs, which were found in one of the area’s many pot holes. On the lid of the box a diagram illustrates the size of an aurochs next to a human male: it stood six feet tall, like the man, while today’s cow reaches the man’s shoulder. Scoured with chemicals and light to hold, it is hard to imagine this bone supporting such a large beast. It would have taken courage to approach an animal of that size, yet the early Neolithic settlers domesticated some of them. They also hunted them, probably with spears made of ash, and may have built hurdles from ash to fence in those they kept for work. They would have harnessed the aurochs, like oxen, to cultivate the ground, using a simple plough made of ash. In 2011 scientists in Denmark collected DNA from samples such as this femur bone, then mixed it with some genes the aurochs shared with modern cattle, such as the Highland breed, attempting to resurrect the ancient beast.

      On a damp day, I return to Colt Park with my family. We slip and slide down the wet stones on the green path to the bottom field. The dog and I skirt the limestone cliff while the rest of the family scramble up into the woods with their cameras, ignoring my warnings. The trees are taller, their fine fronded leaves resplendent in green. Last time I saw them the trees were grey and bare. Sheep are grazing, and one fat lamb appears to be chewing a twig, probably an ash windfall. The ash may have kept the sheep round here healthy for hundreds of years because the bark contains quinine.

      I climb part way up the cliff and lean into the woods as far as I can: the delicate fragrance of

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