A hawk’s feather lies along the path. I stop to examine it, look carefully around to see if there are any others hidden among the bushes, try to discover whether just this feather was lost during a moult, or whether clumps of scattered feathers might indicate that a hawk died here. Today, as usual, there isn’t enough evidence to draw a firm conclusion. It is the forest’s equivalent of a single well-worn running shoe found beside a highway: we have to make up the back-story ourselves.