When I told a friend about the Sycamore, he responded by referring me to how many trees are being cut down to accommodate 5G. And that made me think about how many we are losing to HS2 and other, probably ill-advised, infrastructure projects…but it also reinforced for me how the felling of the Sycamore by Hadrian’s Wall is different.
Whatever we think, feel, believe or know about how we destroy nature in pursuit of some worldly exploit that some think serves some valid purpose – there is still a gaping hole between that and the senseless chopping down of a single tree in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere – the felling of a tree who stood in the way of nothing and no-one, whose only impact on the world was beauty and joy, and the bringing of some people a little closer to their own sense of awe, wonder and wisdom – and whose being brought to her knees serves no-one and nothing.
Literally no-one and nothing.
Whatever was going on in the mind of the person or people who did this, while they conceived the idea, drove up there in the night and wielded their chain saws in mutilation, I refuse to believe that they woke up the next day and in their hearts believed that they had done a good thing.
Like many of the responses we’ve seen around the web, mine is an emotional response and those emotions are shifting ones. At the moment I’m curious about the back-story of the perpetrator(s). I genuinely want to know what the motivations were, what thought processes led to this senseless
destruction. Part of me does actually want to understand, because if we cannot understand, how can we possibly stop this happening again?
To be fair, I don’t think we can – because I do not believe there is much rationality involved. Still, I want to know. Perhaps I want to know because I want to make some kind of sense of it. Not a sense that I will agree with or fully understand, but something beyond being just dumbfounded that this could be done.
In the meantime, I just want to share my own thoughts on the matter, as scrambled as they still are, about this tree and about why there has been such an outpouring of sadness, shock, outrage and genuine grief at its mutilation.
I'm using the word 'mutilation' deliberately, becuase the tree is not dead. Brought to her knees, but not dead.
THE TREE
I lay no special claim to this tree. I met her way back in 2011 while walking the Wall. My write-up of the walk mentions her only in passing, and mainly by reference to her unlikely starring role in
an American movie.
Why then, was I so shocked and saddened by her felling? It touched me deeply and personally despite that lack of direct connection.
I think one of the unbidden thoughts that arose helps to explain this. That thought was: this is on a par with the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.
Whether it is fair to equate a living tree of two to three hundred years with man-made monuments of over a thousand, is an open question – but it struck me that in both cases it is not the loss of the “thing” that is the issue. Trees and statutes can be replaced but they can not be replicated. Whatever comes after will never be the same trees and statues – and that is the point. It is not the “thing” that matters. It is what the thing stood for.
The destruction is aimed at the heart of faith, of community, of connection. It is intended to destroy more than the physical object.
The word I’ve heard most often about the Sycamore over the last few days is “iconic”. The word literally means portrait, likeness, or image. How then can a tree be an icon? It is a tree. It is its own self. What is it that these people are using it to represent?
Different things to different people.
For some it is memory. It is where ashes have been scattered or proposals made. It is a place of personal romance.
For others there is something heart-touching about the loneliness of the tree. Photographs of her usually frame her against the sky, majestic. Seen from above she looked smaller and somewhat abandoned and alone in that cleared landscape.
Wendell Berry wrote that “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” This goes to the heart of the matter. We recognise when one has become the other. When the sacred is desecrated.
This particular Sycamore was sacred. Over hundreds of years, she had absorbed the stories told about her, and under her shadow. She had taken on the joys and sorrows of those who paused by her side. I lost my father only a few months before I walked down into her gap. I didn’t record thinking about my sorrow as we sat beneath her, quite the opposite in fact, my record of the day walking that stretch of the wall marks it as being one full of joy. But that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t still grieving. Maybe she knew that.
It is scientifically proven that we absorb the chemicals emitted by trees and other plants. It is (to me) a given, then, that reverse also occurs. We know plants communicate chemically. Who knows, what they read of our personal stories when we spend a little time in their shelter? Perhaps I feel as I do at her felling, because she held a tiny fragment of my own story.
NOT JUST ONE TREE
It’s clear that this tree is special to people. Si King called her ‘a sentinel of time’. Others have used words like cathedral, indomitable, the closest thing we had to a sacred tree. It's deeper though. What emerges from what people are saying is that the strong feeling for one tree, turns us back to all trees.
Most of us have personal relationships with the trees in our own neighbourhoods. I think of three in particular that are special to me, two of which I have not visited for a while, the third being one that I pass several times a week and greet in passing as I would smile at a neighbour. We nod to each other and enquire after each other’s wellbeing.
My friend was not wrong to point out the number of trees we are losing to “projects”. We need to question the loss of every tree, what aim does it serve, and what do we lose in the process. I am not suggesting we never fell another healthy tree. I am thinking that we need to be a bit more mindful when we do. If we can do that...if we can question more deeply what is lost and what is gained when cut down trees...then maybe Sycamore will continue to smile.
HOPE
During the first outpouring of responses to the news on social media, there was a lot of what people would like to do to the perpetrators. Standard anger-giving-way-to-hate responses, shaming responses, knee-jerk reactions towards individuals whose identity and stories we knew nothing about. There was a lot of speculation fuelling that fire. However, by the next day I was reading a lot more about what we might do given where we are, about whether the tree would re-sprout, whether it could be replaced with another mature tree, what we might do with the felled wood. The speed with which many moved from condemnation to creation is a seed of hope.
My first reaction was to wonder if I have been wrong all along in my defence of humanity as an integral part of nature, a caring, creative, wise part of nature. Starting to read the thoughts of those who were willing to accept where we are (which is not the same as condoning it) and move through to how can we make something from this, how can we recover from this, what can we learn from this, can we protect others at similar risk and on and on…that helped. That brought me back to my core believe of our place in the world as a species, even if some individuals and their actions
seriously challenge that belief. I am grateful to everyone who threw their own ideas into the mix, however unfeasible they might be. They gave me hope for my species.
WHAT NOW?
So obviously, there is the practical question of what now in this space. My personal feeling is that the true spiritual response would be to let the stump re-sprout and let us learn from her regrowth
about the fall and rise of spirit. Let the Wall protect her as she has watched over it. She will never be what she was, but then neither will any of us. Disasters befall us all and we do what we can to recover.
I do not believe that we should try to fill the gap in the landscape with any facsimile of what has gone. She came without our intervention, she will return. In the fullness of time.
I also feel that leaving her trunk and crown where she fell to re-root would be the natural response…but where there is such wanton destruction, I would fear for further mutilation and theft…so I would favour her wood being used to create beautiful things, the sale of which might go to protect others of her kind.
We will miss her. We will mourn what she was, but let us also watch and wait to see what she becomes next. And try not to judge the one against the other.
And just maybe, spare a thought for all trees: the venerable and the vulnerable and the young and vibrant. Don't only celebrate the iconic trees - find an ordinary one - forge a relationship with it and celebrate that. Just a thought.
