The bungalow stood in some twenty acres. Three hundred yards away, across the field, ran the dense belt of woods—oak, chestnut, larch—that closed the view to the south, but kept the house so delightfully shut in. This belt, a hundred yards deep, with undergrowth of thick holly, formed a wall none could look over, the bungalow nestling, so to speak, within its encircling arm of leaves. A track meandered through it lengthwise, but there was no straight way across to the path that ran along its outer edge, linking the village to the church. Beyond it lay the common, wild with gorse and scattered pines, rising to the deep Sussex sky. … The owners, imaginative folk, having lived there ten years without moving, were proud of The Wood: “It keeps us so private, you see. No one can look through at us. It’s so protective.” Wild horses could not have dragged them from this bit of rural England that was “so private … so protected by our belt of woods, …” whose effect, indeed, pervaded even one’s outlook upon life—the great life outside, beyond. The mind dwelt securely under that “protection.” One’s very ideas were screened and sheltered from the big winds that blow. From the bungalow verandah it rose with fine dignity against the sky; no gleam pierced its impenetrable tangle. The crowding holly saw to that. The dogs hunted in it, the children picked firewood, the little pigs and chickens sometimes got lost in its depths, but its only real inhabitants were grey squirrels, a pair of woodpeckers, and a dozen screaming jays. And on windy nights it roared like the surf against some lonely island shores. … “It’s the making of the place, we think,”—the guests who came and went invariably in agreement. “Rather!” they said. “You’re so nice and cosy behind it, aren’t you? You can’t see through.” ’ Then one adventurous and tactless fellow changed the formula, offering a new, upsetting point of view: “But you can’t see through it anywhere, can you?” “No—rather not,” the owners assured him. “Not even a bit of light—of sky—a glimpse of the horizon beyond?” There was a silence. “What d’you mean?” they asked. His suggestion seemed almost rude. Then, shading his eyes with one hand, the fellow added the words that seemed so unnecessary: “I mean—you can’t see—out!” And the fat was in the fire. He didn’t stay long, this adventurous guest, being, it seemed, of a roving disposition, an uncomfortable man accustomed to open spaces. “The wide seas and the mountains called him, And grey dawns saw his campfires in the rain” sort of person, who mentioned before he left that Even the mighty winds that range the seas
In waterspouts, typhoons, and hurricanes
Begin by chasing leaves down windowpanes.