These Boots Are Made for Walking

February 14, V-day, 2009. It started out as a routine lunch date with Hubster up at the O2 center on Finchley Road in London’s NW3 neighborhood. We decided to go up to the cinema and pre-purchase tickets to the film we had chosen, knowing that if we left it until just before the showing on the biggest date night of the year, that we would not be able to get tickets.
The bus chugged up Finchley Road about ¾ of a mile, and we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the O2. The concept of dim sum is not new to me, but I had never actually gone for just those yummy morsels. We enjoyed the food but found the service slow. Then we took the escalator up one flight to the cinema and purchased our tickets from the machine.

With tickets in hand, we came back down the escalator and went to the Waterstone’s bookstore, where I purchased some non-fiction by the neurophysiologist Oliver Sacks called “Musicophilia” (US title: why we love music) and Hubster got some fiction. My book is by the same author of “The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, true tales of bizarre behavior by patients with unusual types of brain damage. His newest book is about how the brain processes music.

As we paid for our books, I innocently picked up a brochure for a photographic exhibition being held at Kenwood House, a large historic home located at the northern end of Hampstead Heath. Little did I know that it would send me out on more than one Heath-related adventure.

As it was still midday, and I was in the mood for a walk, I decided to head north and make my way to Kenwood House. Hubster is not a Heath Hiker, so elected to return to the flat with his new books. I hopped on a bus the rest of the way up Finchley Road to Golders Green, and approach the Heath on foot from the west. I knew that if I walked up North End Road past the Golders Green underground stop and bus station to a pub called the Bull and Bush, and banged a left at the pub, that I would be in a part of the Heath called Sandy Heath. I had made my acquaintance with this part of the Heath only recently, when I went on the Muddy Heath Hike with the women’s club group.

It was a good thing that I had chosen to wear my zip-up ankle boots upon leaving the flat, as these are particularly comfortable for walking and it doesn’t matter if they get muddy. There is a 100% chance of muddy boots on the Heath in the winter.

The initial approach to the pub was a lot longer and more hilly than I anticipated, but eventually I saw the sign for the Bull and Bush and turned left. Once inside the gate to the Heath, I marveled again at the carpet of oak and beech leaves that covered every inch of the ground. This area is chock full of ancient trees on top of little hillocks. Apparently, the area was used as a “mine” for sand in the old days, including for cement during the 19th century and for sandbags to protect buildings during the Blitz bombings of London in WWII. The workers dug around the trees, so when you are walking you go up and down these little “dips” , and at the top of each hill there is a tree. I noticed someone with a dirt bike enjoying going up and down the hillocks, and wondered if they had seen the sign at the gate that said “no cycling”. It was a perfect spot for pedaling up and down through the woods, however.

I marveled at the amount of green still in evidence after the winter’s snows of several weeks ago. Blackberry bramble bushes still had their leaves, although they were somewhat dessicated and black with either mold or frostbite. The deciduous trees were of course bare, but there were shrubs and evergreens that still held their color. I also noticed shoots of bulbs sprouting up through the carpet of leaves, mostly scilla Siberica (bluebells) and daffodils. No sign of any buds atop the stems, just several inches of leaves about to unfurl. It was a thrilling sight! I know that Spring cannot be far off when the bulbs show themselves to the waiting world.

Another source of green in this area is the moss on the trees. This area must be very shaded in the summer, and in the winter the sun never gets above about 30 degrees off the horizon, so the moss on the trees goes all the way around. There is no way to tell the north side of the tree by the location of the moss, as I am used to in New England. Perhaps the north side was a bit mossier, or a bit greener, or a bit moister, but as the sun was totally hidden by the overcast sky and random arrangement of hillocks it was impossible to tell direction from it, either.
I bent down to examine some rotted tree stumps. I took “portraits” of especially beautiful trees. I touched the bark of an oak that had to be at least four hundred years old. I found a six-inch puddle in the nook between two roots, and enjoyed taking photos of the reflection of the sky superimposed on the bottom of the puddle. Just call me the tree-whisperer. It was a magical interlude.

Somewhere in the midst of all this picture-snapping, moss-massaging and tree-whispering, I became totally disoriented and took off in a direction that was NOT toward the right road leading eventually to Kenwood House and the photography exhibition. I wound up going down a big hill, past some houses and to a road that was unfamiliar. I realized that I had gone Northeast towards a narrow strip of green known as the Heath Extension, the northern end of which abuts a residential neighborhood. So much for being on “auto-pilot”, and of always knowing what direction I was going in. After realizing my error, I re-entered Sandy Heath and managed to go in a straight line to the other side, not stopping to take any further pictures or talk to any trees.I did see a mounted policewoman riding a very handsome police horse into the woods. She hailed the cycler and I can only surmise that she told him to take his bike and go, as I was out of earshot by the time she reached him. Once through the woods and out on the right road, I made the decision that it was probably too late to properly enjoy the photo exhibition, as I would have had another ten or fifteen minutes of walking along the road to get there. I found a bus stop near The Spaniard Inn (circa 1450 or some unbelievable date like that) and headed back to Golder’s Green.

Kenwood House and its treasures would have to wait for another day. I guess that on this particular day, the journey was more important than the destination. Hubster and I did enjoy Vicky Christina Barcelona later that night, but the woodland adventure was even better.