He just set himself to appreciate it.
The forest was largely fir and pine, and the sunlight glanced down the straight trunks and patterned on the carpet beneath.

Hollies gleamed green against the brown background, and in an open space of bare beech trees the littered ground was already pricked with the new green of the wild hyacinth.

Now and again the rounded hills gave glimpses of the far Normandy plain across the serpentine river, then would as suddenly close in on them again until the car seemed to dart between the advancing battalions of the forest as though to escape capture.

At length, in one such place, they leaped forward up a short rise, then rushed swiftly downhill, swung round a corner, and came out on what had become all but a bare tableland, set high so that one could see distant valleys--Boscherville, Duclair--and yet bare, for the timber had been all but entirely cut down.
Five hundred yards along this road brought them to a small encampment.
There were some lines of Nysson huts, a canteen with an inverted triangle for sign, some tents, great stacks of timber and of smaller wood, a few lorries drawn up and silent, and, beyond, two or three buildings of wood set down by themselves, with a garden in front, and a notice "Officers' Quarters." Here, then, Captain Harold stopped the car, and they got out.
There were some jovial introductions, and presently the whole party set off across the cleared space to where, in the distance, one could see the edge of the forest.
Peter did not want to talk, and dropped a little behind.

Harold and the O.C.of the forestry were on in front, and Mackay, with a junior local officer, were skirmishing about on the right, taking pot-shots with small chunks of wood at the stumps of trees and behaving rather like two school-boys.
The air was all heavy with resinous scent, and the carpet beneath soft with moss and leaves and fragrant slips of pine.