This stunned me. The size and the force of it. A chthonic agent breaking through the human-made restraints.
The tree has shown what they need to survive in this place. The resilience required at a time when adaptation has to be profound.
Which leads me to my recent preoccupation with writers and thinkers considering the absolute certainty of the coming upheaval. Jem Bendell is one. His paper - the link is below this extract - argues that we have already overshot enough tipping points for cataclysm to be inevitable. He says the scientists and science reporters have been shielding the public from a truth they do not believe we can handle: that the end is nigh. Bendell claims that acceptance of the reality of crisis is important and could help, not to prevent it, but to make it less bad. Indeed, he thinks that only by realising the enormity of the future challenges will we be inspired to try to mitigate the harms. I think he's right.
Anyway, here's what he feels should arise as a result of facing up to the calamity:
I hope the deep adaptation agenda of resilience, relinquishment and restoration can be a useful framework for community dialogue in the face of climate change. Resilience asks us “how do we keep what we really want to keep?” Relinquishment asks us “what do we need to let go of in order to not make matters worse?” Restoration asks us “what can we bring back to help us with the coming difficulties and tragedies?” Reconciliation asks “with what and whom can we make peace with as we face our mutual mortality?”
I like this framework. Indeed, it feels to me like a distillation of the wisdom in those theories about the narrative arc of myth or fairy story. It is mirrored in the internal work of a psyche approaching Crone-dom. It's a fantastic schema for considering the next phase of life - on the planet and as an individual.
Here is another tree, who has a sign on them to announce their felling. This is a horse chestnut and there are pests and diseases impacting this species. I can see that the horse chestnuts on either side are also losing leaves. I lay under the bare branches feeling into the ground beneath me and I felt trauma. I saw Edwardian women pushing perambulators around the green and then a sense of shock, with the concept of war coming to mind. During WWI, nearby Kew Gardens remained open. Women replaced male gardeners and tonnes of potatoes were grown to help the food crisis. Then, during the Blitz, 30 bombs were dropped on the Gardens. Maybe that was the trauma I felt?
The tree looks dead, but up in the crow there remained tiny sprigs of life.

I found that resilience incredibly moving.
I'm reading your post for the first time quite late in the day. I've noted the link to Jem's paper and I'll read it. The first thing I saw when I opened your post was the pictures of the roots, and I said wow. Then I read the very serious writing afterwards -- your words and the quote, and then the ending with the horse chestnut story. Well ... adaptability and resilience. (Not my strongest attributes.) And the response that could happen after facing up to the calamity. It's perhaps appropriate that I am almost done reading the Fire Weather book.