Through the fields we go with dresses

An inch of mud that stains the bottom of our dresses

Wishing we could talk to trees

And dreaming of the things they’d say.

Would they tell a story of a sweet romance

Or of the Austen girls that bounded by?

I wish that I could speak to them

And hear the tales that they would tell.

I live very close to where Jane Austen was born. I sometimes go running and pass the church where her father was rector and it’s lovely to stop and remember the fact that Jane could well have stood in the very spot that I am standing on.

I’ve sometimes found myself out on my runs through the fields, wondering what the trees would say if they could talk. They would probably have seen Jane bounding past in the same way that Elizabeth Bennet would have done so.

I also used to work in a forest and I sometimes felt like the trees would whisper as I walked through, especially at night when I could hear them creaking in the wind.

Trees are so permanent and so romantic. They offer shade in the heat of the day, and they beg for lovers to carve their initials in their bark. They must hear and feel so many whispers of love and hissed arguments.

I feel so lucky to live out in the countryside and to have so much literary history so close to me. To have rested under the same tree that Jane may have also sat below is such a beautiful thought and I wish that they could tell me everything that they have seen.

Much Love

Rachel xx