The Wood

by John Stewart Collis

An academic and writer, during the Second World War John Stewart Collis was put to agricultural work. Clearing and thinning an Ash wood, he found a meditative peace and an earnest pleasure in the use of axe and bill-hook. The Wood contains his beautiful, thoughtful writing on the joys of nature and of a life of activity, how a love of the sun affects a man, and the progression of nature that sees each plant - hawthorn, honeysuckle, larch, elder - have its hour. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

Genres: Nature, Natural History, Nonfiction

108 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

John Stewart Collis (1900–1984), author best known for The Worm Forgives The Plough his account of his experiences working on farms during the Second World War.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Stewart Collins is best known for his book, The Worm Forgives the Plough, which is an account of his time spent working as a farm labourer in the Land Army in Sussex and Dorset. Whilst in Tarrant Hinton, Dorset he was asked to clear and thin an ash wood using only an axe and bill hook.

It was while undertaking these simple and repetitive tasks that he considered the wood around him in the context of the natural world and how being outside daily meant that you could sense the imperceptible change of the seasons throughout the year.

This short volume is an extract from The Worm Forgives the Plough with a focus on the woodland work. I really enjoyed this, as he writes in a very gentle way, enjoying the manual labour while bringing the woodland back to some semblance of order, but his perception of what is happening around his is razor-sharp. Must read his other book at some point.

[JMJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man, a wood and gainful toil.

Collis takes the reader’s hand and leads them authoritatively but tenderly through the ash woods in which he spent the war years working for the land army. Collis is careful to show the hidden world that can be found in and amongst the trees as well as sharing the honest pleasure he found in useful toil. Perhaps the most striking thing about this book is the author’s eye for the rare moments in life when one is truly content - in Collis’ case this is to be found under the sheltering branches of an old oak as the sunlight slants through the trees and he is able to find an hour to write his reflections. This book is not solely a meditation on the changing faces of the ash, hazel, oak, horse chestnut, rowan, elder and the undergrowth that make up his wood through the changing seasons and endless years but also on the simple joys to be found in appreciating the natural world.

[Daniel Dumas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collis reflects on his time as a forester and a child of the English wood in this short collection of thoughts, reflexions, and facts. The value of finding a particular spot where the sun shines for a short while during its daily trip in the sky so that you may enjoy its warmth and let it inspire you was a particularly valuable insight.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 100 page book is taken from Collis’ book “The Worm Forgives the Plough” which I was enraptured by in the 1970s, and which was written during the last war. It takes all of the material from the original book concerning his clearance of a neglected wood using a few hand tools, and, as a woodland worker myself, it perfectly captures the beauty of the work, the nature visible all around, and his philosophy of life that we could all learn from. An added bonus is that Collis was a lover of William Cobbett and quotes him a fair few times!
An exquisite book that will certainly start me on the process of re-reading all of his writing.

[Helen Pomfrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

makes you want to take time to stop and appreciate what is around you.

[Kristina Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really lovely, measured meditation on nature and cultivation. Also, I learned a lot about trees.

[Jez Burrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wood reads like an casual, meditative almanac - Collis perfectly captures the virtues of the trees, flowers, animals, and people found in the wood he is tasked with thinning, and does so passionately (the section titled The Garden of Eden is particularly poignant) but also with a level head.