The Anatomy of a Tree - and Me.

My first memory of tree climbing happened when I was wee. Yes, I know I’m still wee, but then I was wee-er. The tree was on the edge of the playing field at the back of the house. It was on the far side of the field, next to a fence and a ditch and a herd of cows which we fed with oak tree branches. I remember the very long raspy tongues of the cows as they looped a tongue around the branches and pulled them in. It’s possible my cardi got caught up and I was slowly being hauled towards a cow.

Back to the tree climbing – going up was easy enough. It was a long stretch from the top of the fence to the nearest branch. The monkey gene in me was not yet dismantled by fear and good sense. Getting down was a different issue. Climbing up, well you are climbing up and the gaze is upward. Climbing down, the ground is a long way down. Fear kicked in and it seemed my legs which were long enough on the upward journey were so much shorter. And there was an audience of cows. One of us, there was a gang of us in the tree, reached the ground and she ran to get her dad. Not my dad. My dad would have smacked me. Her dad wouldn’t have. A fireman’s lift and I was safely back on firm ground.

I don’t know how I missed seeing the tree as I walked to visit a friend last week. I can only think my attention was on the plum tree on the corner. The man had really pruned it so very few branches reached over the wall. Not like last year. I looked, knowing that there were probably no plums left and if there were, even standing on my tip toes, I couldn’t reach them anyway.

It was two hours later, walking home, I saw the tree. It is quite possible that the tree fell in between the outward and the home journey. Entirely possible.

A woman scurried out of her front gate towards me asking me if I had seen the tree. The woman was a fellow bus traveller who always sat at the front of the bus. She always got off the bus near to the doctor’s surgery. We nodded to one another but didn’t talk. I didn’t know her name. She obviously felt comfortable enough telling me about the tree. It could have fallen on her as the path is part of her journey to a friend that lives just around the corner. Had she left her house just a few minutes earlier she would have been buried beneath its branches. A lucky escape. When it fell, it scraped the pebble dash off a neighbour’s wall.

It had been a very windy day, not that day but a previous one. Another day, a strong wind had brought down a different tree on the estate. A poem prompt if ever there was one -

Connection

she turns a corner on the path.

the giant warrior lies dead,

broken into a thousand pieces,

severed trunk, root wound still fresh,

sweet scented, bitter orange

bark grey, branches long barren

the storm proves the stronger foe,

roots too bruised to hold tall.

this was no swift heart attack

but a dragging death over decades.

nature’s cycle of cruel beauty.

unexpected sorrow fills her heart.

she kneels beside him,

warm hand on cold bark.

a blessing falls from her lips

fallen warrior, rest now

let the earth embrace you

let the wind whisper a last lullaby

let the sun kiss a gentle goodbye

let the rain rinse away all regret

in your passing let new life begin

hers is a moment of connection in

a world disconnected from nature

seeing and knowing too little

This tree, this recent tree falling over had nothing to do with the wind. The tree was rotten inside. There was an empty space where there should have been tree innards. No counting of rings to work out its age, no rings left to count. There was nothing on the outside that indicated trouble on the inside. There were branches, lots of them, and leaves, lots of them, and the usual swaying with the wind. Outside it all looked good. But it wasn’t. And it didn’t shout, ‘Timber’, as it fell. No advance warning – it just fell. And had it fallen just a few minutes earlier than it did, someone might have been underneath it.

It worries me somewhat. It’s not the first tree to fall. Some of the trees on the estate are dead although they are still standing, No leaves on the branches, just pale green lichen clinging on bare limbs. Occasionally the council take them down, but not always. It’s the ones that look alive that worry me. I have a hunch that all the trees on the estate were planted when the houses went up. I don’t see the builders carefully building houses around the trees. The trees don’t look a hundred years old. If that first tree fell in a strong wind, and the second one fell because it had no insides – what’s to say the other trees are not going to fall over? I have never seen any of the council workers checking the state of the trees.

What about people, I feel bound to ask? A healthy looking outside is no guarantee that the inside is equally healthy. I have never had a person fall on me, but who is to say it won’t happen?

And what about me? I confessed the other day to a friend that our house is mostly mirror free. There is a circular one in the bathroom, a make-up one in the bedroom and a mirror made from offcuts of a whisky barrel in the downstairs toilet. I have people tell me that I’m looking well, which I sometimes translate as I need to lose weight. But that is the outside of me. What about the inside me. Not the physical inside, but the stuff in the soul and the spirit. Is that healthy? Yes, it is. I work at it. My outside could do with a little more work. A lot more work, actually.

Next time you look at a tree, don’t be fooled. The outside might look good, but who knows what’s going on inside?

And don’t be fooled by people either. Appearances are deceptive. Inside they might be crumbling. Be gentle.