The Enchanted Places

by Christopher Milne

  Posingford was a wood we often used to visit. It is about half a mile from end to end and runs uphill from the river at the bottom to the Forest at the top. It is a gay and friendly wood, the sort of wood you could happily walk through at night, feeling yourself a skilful rather than a brave explorer: a wood of hazels and willows and sweet chestnuts with here and there an oak or a pine.

  To the left of the path as it enters the wood is a lake. If you called our river a stream then I suppose you would want to call this lake a bog. But for me it was a lake: in winter when it froze over it was possible to do some quite good sliding between the tussocks of rush. The path continues between lake and river until it is crossed by a larger track that has entered the wood over a bridge. This bridge still stands and still looks much as it did when Shepard came there to draw it: it is Poohsticks Bridge.

  It is difficult to be sure which came first. Did I do something and did my father then write a story around it? Or was it the other way about, and did the story come first? Certainly my father was on the look-out for ideas; but so too was I. He wanted ideas for his stories, I wanted them for my games, and each looked towards the other for inspiration. But in the end it was all the same: the stories became a part of our lives; we lived them, thought them, spoke them. And so, possibly before, but certainly after that particular story, we used to stand on Poohsticks Bridge throwing sticks into the water and watching them float away out of sight until they re-emerged on the other side.

  Poohsticks Bridge was the way into Posingford if you came along the lane. The lane that takes you to Cotchford continues on to Upper Hartfield. Half way along its length it bends round to the right and at this point a track leads downhill to the left and this is the track you want. This was certainly the easier way, the way Nanny and I used to come. The other way, boggier and bramblier, was the way I preferred when I was rather older, when Nanny had left and I was on my own, when I was on the lookout for wild life and didn’t want to meet people. Not that you were likely to meet many people if you did choose the lane. In fact the only person Nanny and I would be likely to meet was Hannah, and we would probably be looking for her anyway. She was a little older than I and lived in a house near Posingford where her father kept a chicken farm. A small child needs another child to play with. In London I had Anne, and there were lots of other friends living nearby whom I could meet from time to time. It is true that Anne often came to Cotchford (bringing her Nanny but leaving her parents behind); but she couldn’t be there all the time that I was, and so I needed someone else; and luckily there was Hannah, only half a mile away. I cannot remember either how or where we first met. Probably we just happened on each other on one of our walks up the lane, and Nanny, who was good at talking to the people we met, talked to her, and that was how it all started. Our meetings were almost exclusively out of doors. We never went into Hannah’s house, except just to call for her, and she never came to ours. We played in the woods and in the fields. We climbed trees and pretended to be monkeys. We paddled in the river and dug a hole in the river bank and called it the Channel Tunnel. We played in the barn and the stables that had once been part of Cotchford. We helped with the haymaking and rode home on the top of the hay cart. We helped with the apple picking and were allowed to eat the windfalls.

  The barn was still in use. It housed, among other things, a swallow’s nest, a farm cart, a chaff cutter and a very original smell. And two cart horses lived in the stable. A little farther up the lane was the apple orchard, whose trees, old and bent, made wonderful climbing. It was here that I lost Roo. We had all – Nanny and I and the animals – spent the afternoon playing there; and on our return Roo was missing. We went back and searched and searched, but in vain. Opposite the orchard were the fields and woods we visited on our flower picking expeditions. This wood for primroses, the ash plantation for orchids, the larger wood beyond for bluebells, the top of that field, along the edge of the bracken, for cowslips. Primroses, bluebells, orchids, cowslips, violets and foxgloves: Nanny and I would gather whole basketsful. And it was here – more especially than anywhere else – I would find that splendour in the grass, that glory in the flower, that today I find no more.

  And so we worked our way down the lane, exploring farther and farther afield, until we came to the track down to the left, the bridge over the river and Posingford Wood on the other side. And just as on our first visit to the river we had discovered Dragon’s Bridge, so on our first visit to Posingford we met the charcoal burner. And while Nanny, good at talking to people, talked to him, I, good at listening, listened. And then we returned home full of our exciting adventure.

  There can be no doubt which came first here.

  The charcoal burner has tales to tell

  He lives in the forest

  Alone in the forest . . .

  A ten-year-old boy might well have asked what charcoal was – how it was made and what it was used for – might have asked to see the tools that were needed, and the pit where the wood was burnt, might have gone home eager to try making his own charcoal. But I was only five, too young and too shy to ask. Old enough only to listen, and to remember indelibly one thing only. ‘And he told us he had once seen a fox!’

  And rabbits come up and they give him good morning . . .

  And owls fly over and wish him goodnight . . .

  Oh, the charcoal burner has tales to tell . . .

  There is a path through Posingford Wood – Nanny and I soon found it – that takes you up to the Forest. In fact this is the quickest way of getting to the Forest if you don’t just go up the main road. (And who would choose a main road in preference to a path through a wood?)

  If you look at Ashdown Forest on the map you will see that it covers an area roughly triangular in shape, an equilateral triangle with sides about six miles long and with the towns of Forest Row, Crowborough and Maresfield at its corners. The bit we knew best lay half way along the side joining Forest Row and Crowborough. This was the bit we could reach on foot.

  Perhaps at this point I should break off for a moment to explain to those who today go everywhere by car that in those days we didn’t. Cars had been invented – oh, yes, it wasn’t all that long ago – and we had one and we also had a chauffeur to go with it. But they both lived in London and returned there after we had been deposited. So while we were at Cotchford we had to rely mainly on our feet. If we wanted to catch a train or if my father wanted to go golfing, we could always ring up Mitchells, the garage in Upper Hartfield. If we wanted to go shopping in Tunbridge Wells (as we usually did round about my birthday) we could walk to Hartfield and catch a bus. Other than that, we walked. It was not until later that my father learnt to drive (taught by Burnside) and we kept a car permanently at Cotchford.

  So if we wanted to go up to the Forest we went on foot. And so did others: only those who could walk to the Forest went there. This meant that when we got there we had the Forest almost entirely to ourselves. And this, in turn, made us feel that it was our Forest and so made it possible for an imaginary world – Pooh’s world – to be born within the real world. Pooh could never have stumped a Forest that was littered with picnic parties playing their transistor radios.

  Anyone who has read the stories knows the Forest and doesn’t need me to describe it. Pooh’s Forest and Ashdown Forest are identical. We came there often and since it was more of a walk than a ramble these were frequently family occasions, the four of us in single file threading the narrow paths that run through the heather. For my father, as I have said, though a bad rambler, was a keen walker.

  Cotchford lies in a valley. To the south beyond the river the land rises, steadily up and up, until you reach the Forest. Then up and up again until you reach the top of the Forest. And at the very top of the Forest is Gill’s Lap. I could see Gill’s Lap from my nursery window. You could see Gill’s Lap from a great many places for miles around – a clump of pines on the top of a hill. And of course you can see it as Shepard drew it in The House at Pooh Corner.
In the book it is Galleon’s Lap but otherwise it is exactly as described, an enchanted spot before ever Pooh came along to add to its magic.

  A path from Gill’s Lap takes you to the main road. On the other side the Forest falls away to a valley, then rises again beyond to distant trees. At the bottom of this valley runs a little stream. It is only a very little stream, narrow enough to jump across, shallow enough to paddle across, but it twists and tumbles between steep stony banks. It was here that the North Pole was discovered. As you make your way down to it and continue up on the other side you will be following the route Pooh took in an earlier chapter when he went ‘down open slopes of gorse and heather, over rocky beds of streams, up steep banks of sandstone into the heather again; and so at last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood’ only, of course, as your map will have told you, it is really the Five Hundred Acre Wood.

  The Five Hundred Acre is very different from Posingford. It is a real forest with giant beech trees, all dark and mysterious. You would indeed need to be a brave explorer to venture into the Five Hundred Acre at night, and I never did. The easiest way to get to it from Cotchford is down the main road past the Six Pine Trees, over the bridge, and then, a little farther on, through a gate on the left where a path leads to a farm on the top of a hill. On the other side of the hill a field runs down to a little stream. A bridge crosses the stream and beyond the bridge the trees begin. Perhaps, to be accurate, I should say ‘began’ because these trees vanished during the war. And this was sad for me, because among them was a tree I was particularly fond of. It was only just inside the wood and the path ran right by it. So Nanny and I must have discovered it on our first visit. It was a huge and ancient beech tree, one of a group of about half a dozen. It looked as if over the centuries it had grown tired of holding its arms up to the sky and had allowed its lower branches to droop. One branch in particular came out horizontally then curved downwards to rest its elbow on the ground. And at this point you could sit on it. Or you could stand on it and walk a little way along it and then jump off into the soft carpet of dead leaves spread out below. You could practise balancing, then practise jumping. It was difficult to walk very far for the branch was moss covered and slippery and soon got too steep, and there was nothing to hold on to. So then you could sit astride it and wriggle your way forward.

  ‘Look, Nanny. Look how far I’ve got!’

  ‘You mind you don’t fall, dear.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  I wriggled along the branch as far as I dared, until the ground seemed miles below me. If I had been braver I could have gone right the way along to where the branch joined the trunk. But it was a bit frightening. So I sat where I was, swinging my legs, then slithered back to safety. Then we went home to tea and to tell of our adventures and our discoveries.

  ‘You must come and see it one day, come and watch me climb along it.’ And one day they did. One day all four of us visited the Five Hundred Acre to see the great tree, one to climb it, three to watch. And of those who watched, one perhaps to dream, to see the branch snaking to the ground and someone walking up it, walking easily, walking all the way, up the steep bit, along the level bit, right up to the trunk, finding there a door with a knocker and a bell, a door in the tree and someone living behind it. Who? Who? Could it be an owl? Could it be Owl that the visitor had come to see?

  ‘And so at last, tired and hungry, to the Hundred Acre Wood. For it was in the Hundred Acre Wood that Owl lived.’

  I cannot swear that this was how it happened. It is only a guess. All I can say is that, though Owl was an imaginary character, invented by my father, his house was real. And this was it.

  9. Tree Houses

  Posingford, the Forest, the Five Hundred Acre: this was where it all happened, but not where it started. It started much nearer home: at the top of the garden, in an ancient walnut tree. The tree was hollow inside and a great gash in its trunk had opened up to make a door. It was the perfect tree house for a five year old. I could climb inside and sit on the soft, crumbly floor. In the walls were cracks and ledges where things could be put; and high above my head was a green and blue ceiling of leaves and sky. Pooh and I claimed it. It was Pooh’s House, really, but there was plenty of room for us both inside, and here we came to play our small, quiet, happy games together.

  But though there was plenty of room for a boy and his bear, there wasn’t enough room in it for Anne as well. She could come visiting, come to tea perhaps. But she couldn’t live here. So she had to have another house, and luckily there was one: there was the well house. This was not the old well down at the bottom of the hill, but a new one we had had dug at the top just next to the walnut tree, to supply the Taskers’ cottage. The water was deep down and safely covered over and above it was fixed a pump (a hand pump, of course); and over the whole thing was a wooden shed. This was where Anne lived. It was not such an exciting house as mine, but it was roomier. And so, though Anne could come to visit me, I usually went to visit her, and on her flatter, larger, more convenient floor we could prepare our mud pies, have our tea parties, sing our songs and laugh at each other’s jokes.

  Between our houses was a small path made of crazy paving. At first it didn’t start anywhere very special or go anywhere very special. It was just a piece of crazy paving because a kind old man called Mr Farmer had come to make crazy paving paths through our rock garden. I used to watch him, silently, intently, as small boys do. I watched him lay his sand base, then fit the stones together on top, then brush and water more sand into the gaps between them. It looked quite easy, something I could do too. So I was allowed to have some of his smallest stones, the bits that were no use to him, and I carried them up to Pooh’s House, and built my path. Later I felt that it ought to go somewhere, so Tasker made me a wooden sundial. And then I felt anxious that perhaps too many people might walk down it to see the time and not do it any good. So I dug a heffalump trap at the other end and carefully disguised it with sticks and grass. And one day I caught Mrs Tasker’s foot, and was in disgrace.

  Pooh’s House was the first of many tree houses that I lived in on and off over the next few years, but it was the only one I could get right inside. The others were mostly apple trees or hazels.

  ‘Hullo. What are you doing up there?’

  ‘I’m in my bedroom. I’ve only just got up. But I’m coming down to my dining-room for breakfast. That’s my dining-room, that branch down there.’

  To grown-ups one room looked much like another, for I made no attempt to furnish them, and I suppose I ought to have forgiven Tasker when, tidying up one day with his pruning saw, he sawed my dining-room down.

  So if anyone wonders why in the stories so much time seems to be spent in trees or up trees, the answer is that this, in real life, was how it was.

  10. Weathers

  ‘It rained and it rained and it rained’ . . . In London if it was raining, you took a bus instead of walking to wherever it was you were going. Or you put on a macintosh instead of a coat. If it was raining Anne and I could spend the afternoon playing in the Natural History Museum instead of Kensington Gardens. It didn’t make much difference to what we had planned to do. For if we didn’t do it here, we could equally well do it there; and anyway most of the really exciting things were done indoors. But in the country it was quite different.

  This was one of the things we discovered when we went to live at Cotchford. In the country the weather matters. In London you only notice the weather when it is very hot or very cold or very wet. But in the country there is weather every day; and sometimes it brings new and exciting things you can do, and sometimes it stops you doing the exciting things you had hoped to do.

  Take the wind, for example. In London it came only on windy days, gusting down the street, throwing dust in your face as it passed. Maybe in the parks and along the river the trees fluttered their leaves and nodded their heads to it. But in the streets the lampposts stood unmoved like guardsmen on parade, the houses stared unblinki
ng at the houses on the other side, cars and buses went on their way. Only when it got really angry and sent an old gentleman’s hat bowling along the pavement did people stop and look.

  But in the country there was wind not just on windy days but every day, even though it might be so gentle that only the poplar behind the rose garden noticed its passing. There was the wind that played over summer meadows; the wind that brought the hot scent of hay or the cool sweet scent of bracken; the wind that blew the cherry blossom down like snow, the wind that sent dead leaves scurrying and dancing down the road; the wind that carried the sound of church bells over the hills on a summer’s evening to fill me with a strange sadness. There was the biting cold east wind that came out of a blue sky early in the new year, so that from indoors it looked as if spring had arrived and outdoors Nanny made me wear an overcoat. I hated wearing overcoats in the country, especially when it was so nearly spring. Overcoats were Londony things. Or there was the rollicking west wind, driving the clouds before it, roaring and tearing over the meadow, hurling itself at the trees, wailing in the telephone wires, hooting down the chimney, banging at the doors. ‘Come out, come out,’ it bellowed. And when I was out in it and alone in it I could shout back: ‘Blow harder, blow harder.’

  Or rain. Rain falling from a grey sky seen through my bedroom window just as it was getting light. Weather matters so much in the country, especially when you are young. I had been planning something special for today, something that needed the sun, and I had gone to bed the evening before all impatient with dull night, all eager for the morning. And now it was raining. I stood at the open window, staring up at the grey sky, staring and staring, trying to stare through the grey curtain to the blue that lay on the other side, trying to stare a hole in the curtain. ‘Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight.’ Last night had been so lovely and clear, and there had been a red sky as the sun had gone down, flooding the courtyard and dining-room with golden light. How could it be so different today? ‘Rain before seven, fine before eleven.’ My father had taught me that. Well, it was raining now and it was not yet seven. So there was a hope, quite a good hope really. I went back to bed, saying ‘Rain before seven, fine before eleven’ over and over again to try and make it so.