My Love Of Woodland

This is where my conscious memories of woodland begin.
I was taken to Epping Forest on a Sunday School treat when I was around five or six years old. Unfortunately my main memory is falling off a donkey. My foot being caught in a stirrup I was dragged along the ground, finishing up with a nasty graze on one of my arms. The trees took a second place that day!
As a young child Hockley woods played a great part in pleasurable outings of exploration. With young friends I wandered through the woods delighting in the great oak trees and the thickly growing remains of past coppicing. My Dad took me for walks and explained about the coppice cutting that had taken place in the past, talks which stayed in my mind and was the beginning of my love of trees. Windflowers starred the ground early in the Spring, delicately stirring to the slightest breeze.
There were also huge ants, not so lovable. Their nests were mountains of tiny twigs and whatever else was suitable for them. They got in the way of picnics. I have an idea they were originally put there as food for pheasants. The pheasants were gone and so were the humans who preyed on them, but the ants were flourishing.
While going to Hockley Council School my friend, Jean, and I were allowed to have a picnic meal in the woods once a week, in the summer of course. We sat in what I think were old sand pits surrounded by trees, not far from the school. On other days we went home for our dinner.
There was also the pleasure of eating the sweetest of chestnuts from the massive trees that grew near to the school playground. There was holly to collect at Christmas time, holly that seemed all the more festive due the search in the depths of the woods for bushes with berries.

My second name is Sylvia which seems to have been prophetic on the part of my parents.