The near country south of Willowdale, a shepherd's way through slopes, orchard rows, and an old willow grove, the kind of ground a village keeps walking out of habit as much as need.
South of Willowdale the land rises in easy slopes that have been grazed, planted, and walked for as long as the village has stood. A shepherd’s way runs up through the hills past orchard rows grown old along their margins, and the path is worn to bare earth in the places where generations have made the same small choices about where to step.
Partway up stands a grove of old willows, seeded long ago from the village’s own great tree and left to grow at their own pace. The Galadwen visit it less often than the Heartgrove, but the stillness under the branches is the same in kind if not in depth, and villagers with something to think over tend to end up there without quite deciding to. Beyond the grove the briarwood closes in, and the path thins the way paths do when fewer feet have needed them.
