Dave had already disappeared, seemingly swallowed by the forest and its secrets. Maybe he just wanted to escape the endless drizzle, but something told us otherwise. In the woods, Dave can see things that escape me entirely. We knew it would be at least an hour until we saw him again. Dave was entering Dave World, a place where everything makes sense and all is calm. He’d be just fine.
By his own admission, Lee wasn’t feeling the love. He couldn’t see the forest sprites emerging from the mist. “Everything is just a tangled mess!” he complained as he watched Carl and I creeping around the mossy boulders at the edges of this magical dark green world. Lee likes minimal, and this was anything but. Maybe he’d find a lone tree for his Leica somewhere outside the woodland. But with the filthy elements in such a persistent mood, his state of the art camera stayed in the bag.
On the walk from the car park, I mostly chatted with Carl. Carl and I had been “friends” on another platform for a couple of years by now, and although he only lives just over the border in west Devon, this was the first time we’d met. We had much to talk about, including his autumn workshop visit to Iceland, which had been interesting to say the least. We shared future plans, anecdotes on locations and even more importantly, he told us that the Fox Tor Cafe in Princetown had excellent reviews. That was lunch sorted then.
While Carl had been here a handful of times, this was just my second visit. The first time had been six years earlier, when I’d placed reasonably well in the over fifties category in a nearby 10k trail race that took us from the high ground at Castle Drogo down into the depths of Fingle Woods alongside the River Teign, another location I’ve long wanted to photograph but still not made it to. On that day my partner in crime was Emma, an old friend of many years whose race plan was always the complete opposite of mine. Whereas she’d charge off from the starting line like a bull at a gate, I’d struggle to find an early rhythm and be wheezing away like a broken accordion. Towards the end I’d be settled in, breathing evenly and feeling strong, by which time she’d be hyperventilating noisily and demanding more Haribo. We stuck together throughout the course, each taking turns to swear and curse at the other for dragging them out on a soaking March morning - all because the finishers’ medals looked so delightfully blingy. “Give ‘em a shiny thing for getting over the finish line and they’ll come in numbers,” said the organisers to themselves. The language from my companion in that last steep uphill mile was especially fruity that day.
After more than six miles of purgatory in running shoes, Emma had gone to spend the afternoon with her in-laws who lived nearby. I’d brought my camera gear with intentions to ignore the fast road and roll back across the moor. The wood had been one of the two places I planned to visit. “Now let’s see - trail running shoes, check. Compression socks, check. Waterproof winter trousers, check. Welly boots, double check.” It seemed I had everything I needed - except for the conditions. That day I carefully focus stacked a strangely symmetrical frame among the carnage, but in retrospect I’m not sure it was worth the bother. To make this place ping, you really need a bit of mist. Or a lot more skill in Photoshop than I possessed.
Today, six years later things were pinging quite nicely. I mean you can always have more fog of course, but the meteorological lottery was rewarding us well for our efforts. And we’d started very early, which you probably know isn’t my thing at all. In fact, when I later told one of you that I’d been up before 6am in preparation for this outing, he demanded to know who’d hacked into my Whatsapp and threatened to call the authorities. But yes, we’d arrived here at eight, met a few moments later by Carl, and slooshed our way through the mud to the woods, enveloped in a grungy grey curtain, just as we’d hoped for.
It might take a while to start to see things, but when you do, it’s really quite rewarding. Nick, who joined us a little later, has been here countless times, yet he told us he still often finds new shapes emerging from the mist. And now, as I stole away from the others and headed a few yards north, I found the lollipop stick, poking through a mossy “V” shaped frame. No faffing around with focus stacks this time, just a straightforward thumbprint on the main attraction and let everything else recede into a blur. There’s so much waiting here to be discovered.
Dave had that quiet smugness about him which always means he’s found a masterpiece. Carl looked happy enough too. Lee was chewing a Snickers bar. I think the Leica had come out briefly, but he was really saving it for the lone hawthorns we’d find elsewhere later. For three of us at least, the first full day had started well, but it was time to move on and find the next location.