Climbing down from the path, I realised I'd worn the wrong shoes. Too old, too little grip, and entirely not enough support. Sitting down on my bum, I inched my way into the old tin mining gully. I picked the spot that was also full of gorse bushes. Spikes hidden in long grass on too steep a slope. I went slowly and grabbed the grass for support, not the prickly bush. Across the stream at the bottom and back up the other side to the rowan tree. Checking the ground for windfall first is easy with rowan berries. They’re bright red and often fall in bunches at the end of their growing season. Navigating up and down the gully around the base of the tree, I found 40 berries, mostly in small groups. Not enough for ink, but a good start.
Sitting down on the edge of the gully, I'm eye level with the middle of the tree. The bunches of red berries are bright with morning dew. It’s sunny today and the clouds are fluffy. No risk of rain, or rather, no risk of rain in the next 20 minutes. The leaves of this rowan seem smaller. But they always are. It’s ash that has big compound leaves with leaflets the size of my index fingers. Rowan leaflets are about the size of my pinky finger, smaller for very young trees. Each leaflet is paired with another. Each leaf filled with leaflets. Nearby on the branch, next year’s bud is ready to go.
A cloud rolls past. A few bunches of berries are harvested. I’m not sure if it’s better to pull the berries off the tree in a handful, or trim their stems at the base. I collect a few bunches using each method, and leave any that resist my gentle tug. Then I scramble to the next tree. It’s a little taller. Perhaps older. The branches are too high for foraging from. I check below for windfall, and find enough to half-fill the small bag I’ve brought with me.
On to the next. I repeat the exercise for three more trees in two more gullies. One is quite old. Its trunk had stretched into a smooth silver bark interrupted with dark dashes – the morse code of its story. It didn’t have many leaves this year, but has more berries than any of the others. Is it dying? Is it trying to move its genes into the next generation? I rarely see very young rowan trees. Apart from one sweet seedling that’s barely two leaves tall, most of the rowans on the high moor are at least as tall as me.
Tree by tree, I collect berries for ink. Rowan ink can be green, orange, purple, or red depending on how it’s cooked and the properties of the paper it’s brushed onto. Today I’ve collected a little over 400g of berries, which will become a little less than 400mL of ink. More than enough dusty rose-red ink, but not enough to make a little of all the colours.
A few weeks ago, a bunch of rowan berries sat on the old stone fence near our workshop. I thanked the trees for their gift. The bundle didn’t make sense. The tree itself is several paces away. A barbed wire fence separates it from the old stone wall. It’s curious how the bundle arrived on the old stone wall, but somehow it was signalling it was time to start ink making. I thought it was too soon. Last year’s harvest was months later. But the berries seemed to be saying “start now”. It’s nonsensical. But in retrospect, the only logical explanation is that I should trust my observations instead of dates on a calendar.
I forgot how early it gets dark, and in the early evening head to the reservoir with JP. The water is low and last year we had a great windfall harvest from one of the shoreline trees. This year, there are no berries on that tree and none beneath it. Are we too late, or did the tree have no berries this year? There will be others along the shoreline. We set off looking for more rowan trees. JP is taller than me and can reach more of the branches that are out of my reach.
I continued along the shoreline as the sun sets into the clouds. Not a sunset so much as a disappearance. I’m surprised at how few berries there are here. The track is easier going in my sandals, and I moved away from the shoreline. The light continues to dip, and I realise JP isn’t behind me anymore. He can’t be ahead either and I backtrack. But he isn’t behind me. It’s gotten too dark to see the berries so he must have headed back to the car. When I get there, he isn’t. Surely I should just wait here. He knows the way back. The weather is fine. He won’t have slipped. Patience is needed, that’s all. There’s no cell reception here, I can’t phone. I wonder if I should yell for him. No, if there was a problem, he would be yelling. I waited until he arrives with a small bundle of berries, barely enough to make a little ink. Last year’s windfall from a single tree at this location was more than we collected from over a dozen trees tonight.
We'd passed three trees on the road that a few weeks before we'd noted as good candidates for foraging from, but today they were already barren. What makes ink possible is knowing more than one source. Watching during the season and checking back regularly. Don’t wait too long. Start now. Even a little bit may seem like a lot when you’ve got nothing else.
--
This short essay is part of our Wild Colour Almanac. Posted once a month, and guiding the content we share for the month. Sign up to our weekly newsletter (below) to keep the conversation going.