By Mim Robson
I sure do love trees. It’s hard to even begin to say why. I told a stranger recently that I was writing something about trees and he said “nice idea but what are you going to write about trees that hasn’t been written before?” but I think he might have missed the point. I just really like talking about trees.
Rarely do I leave the house and at some point not say “look at that tree!” or at least think it. Visually they give us a lot throughout the seasons but the scale of them is probably a large part of the fascination. That and the thought that there’s a whole other world of unseen tree underneath our feet.
We interact with trees in so many ways all the way though our lives. We play in, on and under them, we climb them, build in and with them, we grow and nurture them, we cut them down and create with them, we eat from them, shelter under them, they keep us breathing, they’re everything. A woman recently told me a story about how when she was a child she used to walk to and from school, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, and on her way there were some big trees she often used to stop and play under. She recalled a particular day when it began raining and she sheltered under these trees. She watched as the downpour slowed and the rain finally stopped, and then slowly, big, heavy drops fell from the leaves of the trees all around where she was sheltering. She said her 7 year old self felt this awe at the magic of it raining underneath the tree, whilst beyond it the rain from the sky had stopped. It made me think of how trees can transform depending on our perspective, needs or even perhaps just our age.
As a student I used to live opposite Derby Arboretum – it’s a beautiful old park with winding paths through all kinds of different trees. I went there often with friends, and remember walking around it one day with my housemate deciding which tree reminded us of which of our friends. One friend was the horse chestnut, because she reached out to all those surrounded her. Another friend was a particularly neat and upright looking conifer. It may just be me, but it seems easy to relate human qualities and characteristics to trees and perhaps that is why I have a fondness for so many of them.
I obviously do a lot of intense research for these articles and when I googled “did uk used to be covered in trees” it said yes, it did, for 7000 years! Imagine that. 7000 years of pure trees.
There are hills I walk on where I grew up, and all along the paths are old trees that feel like part of the fabric of the place. I’ve walked past and around and under these trees all of my life. There are deep channelled names carved into tree trunks, that have expanded as the tree has grown, of people who lived in the village 100 years ago whose family name probably still lives on in the village now. Remember the ‘Beast from the East’? Things started to change after that, or at least I started to notice changes. The strong winds blew down some of these old trees on the hill. Whole root systems upended, packed thick with Yorkshire Wolds chalk. But it wasn’t just one tree that was affected – the uprooted tree would fall onto another tree, and in time, that one would fall too. I know I live by the coast now and perhaps it’s to be expected but it seems to me that it has become outrageously windy in the past 10 years or so. A few more heavy batterings from storms meant that a couple of years ago I walked through a wooded area of these beloved old trees on the hill and it seemed like half of them were fallen, and the rest not far off giving up the ghost too. I felt sad and unsettled, like I was seeing something end.
Time has passed and I went up there the other day. I climbed over and under trunks and branches laid across the old path. Children had built a lean-to den off one of the fallen trees, using broken branches gathered from the same spot. I suppose things do end, and they also carry on.
It struck me that a similar experience of loss happened for a lot of people when Sycamore Gap was felled. The meaninglessness of it added to this I think, but I was surprised by my own horror, and the distress that it caused so many people I know. It made me wonder what it is that makes some trees feel more significant to us than others. When we consider the fact that trees are cut down, fall, or generally ignored or forgotten about all the time. Some trees never get a look in on the “look at that tree!” front.
It felt like Sycamore Gap carried this iconic sense of connection to the land that when it was cut down it felt like (for a lot of people) someone had destroyed something that was theirs, like something special had been broken or stolen from them. And when those old trees on my old hill fell down, I saw that I was losing something that used to be mine too. Perhaps certain trees can feel like a natural focal point for a connection to a place, a person, or a time in our lives, a part of ourselves, and that’s why they feel more significant than others.
I wonder if what these special trees represent is time. A kind of link to a time that isn’t here anymore, and when that tree goes, a link to the past goes too. Despite the fact that they have a visible life cycle there’s also a sense of stability in trees that feels comforting, and when trees we’ve known to stand strong and tall all our lives topple, it can raise an unsettling awareness that stability isn’t always permanent.
I’ve started out somewhere new here in North Shields, away from my old hills and falling trees. I’m on the lookout for new special trees. I’ve asked around for where to find them and I’ve been told that Northumberland Park and Preston Cemetery might have what I’m looking for. Both are beautiful places that I’m happy to spend time searching in. If you’ve got any favourite trees, locally or elsewhere, any tree stories, memories or thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Send them over at [email protected] (there’s space for big boats and trees in my world).
