A Walk. A Tree. A Hope.

Protecting nature

Markings on an Ash Tree Photo - Georg Cook

                                               Walk through a wood or forest 
                                              And you will have to look hard
                                                          To see a TREE
                                     For trees do not readily show themselves
                                                They hide themselves in plain sight 
                             Not speaking their wisdoms freely to passing visitors
              They keep their counsel from those those who walk amongst them 
                                            Without seeing, without noticing
                                      Instead they invite a friendship to form
                                            With those who stop and notice
                                        Only then do they reveal themselves 
                                                         ~ Georg Cook

The day had barely begun. However, the air was already beginning to warm with the rising spring sun. The coolness of night being chased away by the new day. Except for in the woods, where it hid in the rolling dips of the gullies. Clinging to the budding branches. Here under the trees the cool air remained, walking the footpaths with the early morning walkers and runners.

As the sun crept above the South Downs it flooded the south facing slopes. Waking the first of the day’s insects, who stretched out their wings to capture the most of the growing warmth, under the pale blue April sky. Not yet fully unfurled into the day. The emerging treacle sunlight pierced the canopy allowing for shafts of light to touch the floor of the woods.

The haphazard patterning looking like a disco ball that had ceased moving when the dawn light arrived and the nocturnal music had stopped. The woods were still slumbering in the early light.

Walking with me is my youngest. All full of the spring sunshine that warms him as it does the land. He is all energy and full of a desire to be outside. It feels like a precious gift to be alone with him in nature. Like the woods that are full of birdsong, he too is full of song that appear as a stream of words. Words that come tumbling out too fast at times, trying to keep up with the speed at which thoughts and ideas arrive for him to process. He is full of curiosity, mixed with amazement, sprinkled with affection.

Today his affection would be sorely high-lighted.

For on this particular morning, we decided to walk on the top loop as we call it. It’s the path that takes us past our newest favourite tree. She is a fallen Ash Tree, covered in a beautiful mosaic of markings and moss. Since her falling in the winter storms just before Christmas I have often used her as an Axis Mundi, to deepen my connection with the woods. She is an old being, with so much wisdom to share. Quickly becoming a favourite “sit-spot” to observe the horizon out to sea. Or watch the Buzzard pair circling on the thermals of the slopes.

Walking along the path something felt different, a bruising on the land that I could not yet see. As if it were only just forming under the skin.

As we made our descent, the shock hit both me and my son into silence. The fallen Ash had been logged, and her truck cut into deep discs scattered down the slope. Her body broken. My rational head told me that by logging the Ash, someone, I should say the local council, have made walking the top path easier. Walkers no longer must clamber over her trunk. But my heart says the destruction of her trunk by the council, the current custodians of the woods, has yet again displayed that they have no connection to the woods, to the trees. They have not listened to the land and so have added to the destruction of this ancient knowledge.

Nature once more under threat. The ash was so wise, even in her fallen state. Sitting on her fallen trunk was to find a stillness, a point of balance. She had the look of a woman reclining in a restful pose and now she had been cut, by humans. Always by humans.

My son was as sad as I was, and asked in his childlike way what we could do about it. Of course we couldn’t put her back together, no matter how hard we tried. My heart ached for his questioning and his desire to make it right. On the largest section of her truck, we placed a pinecone (just visible at the top of the photo I took) that we had collected earlier on our walk. It felt like an honouring. An acknowledgement.

On our way back home, we talked about how humans need to protect nature properly. It felt wonderful to think that nature was growing in their heart. That his generation of little people understand the need to protect nature and more importantly that they actively want to.

The future of nature is feels is in good hands.