It always amazes me that this volunteering business - in Selwyn's Wood anyway - can make hardy workers of many of us. We suffer bruises, blisters, cold hands and feet or ----- conversely -- pouring sweat in the sun, and black humour, all for the sake of the environment. On the other hand, some who have worked with us during their first morning have never been seen again...

The hardy ones have trudged through the winter's inclement weather, week in and week out, to insert new pipes to improve a boggy patch; to coppice alders on the streamside compartment, and have been rooting up those awful invasive rhododendrons. As I write a truly large patch of them is about to be decimated finally.

So some of us have been turning our attention to an area of wood adjoining the heather. There is evidence of heather here in the past, and we hoped that perhaps one day it might reappear. So we have removed some dead or dying chestnuts and a number of birches and number of small oak saplings.

What better than a nice stand of heather among the trees which we have thinned and which now have more room to "breathe". And over all for good measure there is the backdrop of the Downs in the distance.

This thought, together with a coffee on hand; a hint of warming sun on my back; the birds singing, and my old dog Rosie dozing nearby, is why we are volunteers. I wouldn’t have changed places with anyone else in the world at that moment!

John Hall © 2008