Over the last couple of weeks, Dead Good Guides have been camped out in a wood near where I live, inviting passers-by to help transform trees felled by a mighty storm on January 3rd into carvings of the animals whose habitat changed dramatically overnight (nearby, several acres of forest was blown down).

Last Friday afternoon I went to the opening with my sons - aged 3 and 1. We peered into a Douglas Fir stump now a bowl with carved words; encountered Deer, Rabbit, Owl, Snake, Fox and Squirrel peering from blackened stumps; and listened to a recording of their mum's story about how our youngest got his first tooth that night. About half an hour after we woke up, arcs of fizzling yellow lightning careened into the ground as a giant Norway Spruce crashed onto the three phase powerlines that run by the side of our house, causing them to ricochet into each other before shorting out our electricity for what turned out to be six days.

The overall result is not crass but - for me - a subtle invitation to notice how we are entering a new climate epoch (see for example George Monbiot's latest missive here).

The paradox is that I left the music, chocolate cake and sense of fun in the woods there buoyed up with a great sense of optimism...