Nik Taylor “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way... As a man is, so he sees.” William Blake
1. (the tree I named) Playful dancer: plate-like feet, splayed thighs,fecundity. I touch the bark all over. Just below the split in the tree is a roughened round area, where the womb might be. I run my hands over my belly in warm circles. It’s enlivening and comforting to the grief that randomly arises due to not being a mother. It’s happening more these days since my own mum died 11 months ago. I remain kind. Feeling-in-the-making of this (my) tiny somatic story, in this place, in this moment. I move on.
3. Mentor and pupil - mentor leans to pupil, who grows very straight. A flame is scored in mentor’s trunk. Teach me, too. What is the invitation ? Answer: Come round behind.
See, the boundary ends here, where barbed wire has embedded in the cambium. The wall and original wire fence, now rusty, have diverged.
The sun light on the Cotswold wall picks out the film of green lichen.
Charlotte Rooney: The Ash and the Birch and Knowledge Hard Won
Today I did an organised walk, joining one of Walking The Land’s ‘First Friday’ walks, with an invitation to explore and respond to winter trees. We met virtually as a group to share ideas and thoughts, and state our intents for our walks, and then went our physical separate ways to, in a delightful phrase, ‘walk together alone’.
I had intended to investigate a stand of birch trees at the bottom of the flank of Rodborough Common, and blithely stated that normally on this sort of thing I would just walk and see what tree called; but today I was purposefully going to find these birches. I’d been thinking of new beginnings – a possible end to lockdowns and restrictions; a new year; my own new sense of my ‘makings’ starting to form a coherent whole – and I had a whole set of things to do as outputs from this walk. I was looking forward to a nice walk, engaging a bit with a set of associations, and creating some nice things as a result.
This walk was not that walk.
Firstly, there was no stand of birches. What there was, was a scrub of fallen birch brash which had been repurposed into a rough hurdle fence, and then a stand of very dense saplings, which at first I couldn’t identify. This felt disorientating, disappointing, and slightly shameful – here was I, tree lady, getting it so very wrong. The paths in were very slight, and I made my way along slowly, like a badger or a deer, sometimes on all fours, following Fen who trotted ahead.
I wanted to know where to go next, and the sticks clattered above me and showed me a small, narrow deer track. I followed it and emerged onto the open common once more. I circled round, and then, as buzzard and magpie hovered overhead and a winter sun broke through, I saw them – a clump of mature-ish birch.
I wandered down, and said hello to these trees of innocence and new beginnings. I snuggled down and rested against one. I’d been taking photos as I went, and thought I would take a rare self-photo of me and this birch. So I did. And it was really, really horrible. In spite of all these thoughts of innocence, new beginnings, and childish emotion, harsh winter light is not always a kind one, and in this photo I simply look sad, and haggard, and tired, and old. When I later look at my notes and my bark rubbing I know my hasty scrawl says ‘birch’, but it could easily say ‘bitch’
I looked at the photo in silence, and shock. This is not how I see myself. But on my face, in that picture, I could see the story of 2020 – the many challenges, the exhaustion, the deep, dark graft of yet another round of counselling, of self-exploration, of insomnia, of fear, of despair but also the sheer terrier-like stubbornness of refusing, absolutely refusing, to either give in and give up, or accept this being as a permanent reality. For one of the few things I knew for certain was that if this was what life was going to be like forever, as it had been for some years, then I didn’t want it any more.
I could see the lines and hard lessons of new and painful truths, the shame of not being ‘normal’, of feeling alien in the castle of your own mind, peering out at the world as if there is a glass wall between you and everyone else. The knowing that you have sometimes been a burden and your husband has sometimes been your carer, and his continual and unrelenting supportiveness only serves to highlight your own inadequacy; that your children have had a washed out, dysfunctional mother, that this may damage them whether you wish it or no. Against the clean black and white of the birch bark, it is very hard to lie, even to yourself. I saw all these truths, and in the seeing realised I could only see them now, as this stage of deep healing has passed and I am now rebuilding, finding my way back to myself, learning to like all that sets me apart rather than feeling shame and separateness and fear.
..
Between the birch and the ash, I have learned something of loss of innocence and clear sightedness. And I reflect that birches are richer than they seem – for all their associations with youth and new beginnings, they are craggy, stark, with scarred and slashed bark, scarred and textured and rich. They have an austerity rare in deciduous trees.
I feel raw and vulnerable – I wasn’t expecting this depth of feeling today, and I feel exposed. I am glad I’m in a thicket of trees, hidden from passing eyes. I sit for a while, deep in thought and senses, and then walk on.
As I go, along a previously unexplored path I find a pleasantly sized birch stick. I remember I am carrying my knife, and I roughly and quickly fashion a spear. I feel… better. It comes to me that I am a woman alone in the woods with my dog and a spear I’ve made with my own hand, and I feel myself coming back to myself, in a place where my life has shaped me, like my knife has shaped my spear.
Linnah Ingham-Power
6 Dec 2020 (Draft): There are two trees which have been most contributory to my gatherings from Far Ings – the first a winter-bare aspen whose leaves I gathered December 2018, during my facilitation of a project where other artists were the participants and I the enabler and support.
Bringing the leaves home, I pressed them in my drawing book ( I always see these as ‘places’ - somewhere to put things and a point on a journey), later drawing them and literally going on to envelope them.
I
On observing the results I realised I had perhaps expected the leaves to hang and sway; instead they fluttered and flew, taking on a movement more butterfly than
Aspen leaves, drawings etc Dec 18/Jan 19 In February 2019 I would return to the spot from where they had been gathered, and to their parent tree; having attached thin black cotton to the leaves, I strung them onto the bare branches. I had no idea in December nor in February that I would do this until I did it; it was a windy day, but weather conditions not part of the plan (I had none) – it was just when I could get there.
Returning to the parent tree, Feb 2019
From Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, p138
Aspen, P.tremula, is known by, and named in Latin from the way its leaves tremble in the breeze. Other poplars have the same habit, but aspen’s quivering stands out because of the serrated edges of its leaves and the sound they make – a rustling whisper, as if they were being spattered by rain. Gerard Manley Hopkins caught their rhythm in his lament on the aspens cut down in 1879 at Binsey near Oxford. [I am not sure I agree with this … LI-P)
My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one …
Aspens are colonial trees, spreading by sucker to form what are sometimes quite extensive groves, though individual trees rarely live more than 50 years. In the lowlands, they prefer open, healthy woodland on clay plateaux which become thoroughly wet in winter. But they flourish best in cool climates (they were one of the first trees to return to Britain after the retreat of the Ice Age), and in the uplands they grow in a wider range of habitats, including rocky gorges and stream valleys. I [Mabey] have seen them growing with hazel on steep-sided limestone slopes in the Derbyshire Dales, with an understory that included globeflower, wood anemone, salad burnet and bloody crane’s bill – meadow, woodland and downland species flourishing together in the way they probably did across England in the post-glacial period, 9000 years ago.
Cedar of Lebanon- Stratford Park
Seeds brought back in pockets by explorers shared amongst their associates, those trees planted by plantsmen back in the 1850s. No real idea how big they would grow, only knowing they wouldn’t be there to see the outcome.
The Cedar of Lebanon has become a landmark for more than a generation. How many people have met there, have looked at the long limbs stretching out to the four winds? What has the tree seen over the 150 years of its life? How many have stood or hidden behind its large trunk? It could tell more stories than many a man.
The Painswick stream flowing on down towards the Frome. The lake harbouring the swans, the perch the mallards and the heron. The children chattering as they run to the lakes edge to throw bread at any passing duck or pigeon. The road once the way for horses and walkers, now the province of the car taking people to Stroud Gloucester and way beyond
The tree remains strong. Each year another season of cones and leaves .Occasionally a branch will be pulled from the tree by strong winds, but it will be here long after I have gone
Julius Smit
Their sap bends with easy words as I move towards them, their reassurance of leaves, dark glossy green, fruit squat; as if reaching out for conversation — no conditions are set to take the path, the line
takes me into their space, their nearness admits me into their play of light and shade;
no leaf, no ear is denied connection.
I really relate to trees as hope for the future in many ways. Yet perhaps surprisingly, walking in woodland is a place where I am happy to be surrounded by life and death.
Walking here through the seasons I sense the cooling of summer's heat filtering through the bird filled canopy, I breathe the autumn air, purified by the trees and feel its power as it begins to blow a gale, sending the last leaves spinning gloriously earthbound - golden light from summer's sun eventually falling to earth and enriching the soil. A perfect spiral.
The stark beauty of winter trees, their skeletal form for all to see, provides time for reflection as another year draws to a close.
As well as this seasonal recycling of life and death, over the years dying trees are said to support more life when dead than when they are alive.
It makes me question what is death and life, what is an individual life if it's connected to, and a part of, so many life forms?
As I walk in Norton Woods thinking about friends and relatives who have died this year, I find comfort in these woodland thoughts; not answers, just real contact with ongoing life and death.
Andy Freedman
I
Perhaps woods near to populated areas have played, and continue to play, a role as havens not just for nature but for humans looking to escape from the rules of ‘civilised’ society
The Compilation Video
This contains moving image material contributed by all the artists as well as clips from the discussion beforehand about the intentions for each walk.