Have you missed the trees??

Well, I had. So, I made a trip to the Cover at Pitsford. My ostensible reason was a desire to visit the Goddess Tree, which I did. But before that, I found a tree to climb.

Last time I wrote about climbing, CC responded with a wonderful haiku, which I include here.

well placed limbs --

oak's spiral sturdy stairway

dares you to climb

The trees that give me confidence feel incredibly special to me. Like they are welcoming me, drawing me toward them and up.

Sitting, or rather perching, in the V of this tree I did not feel very comfortable. Or entirely safe. In fact, I felt this strange yearning to fall backwards. Like you can feel pulled to step off the edge of a cliff. It's an interesting urge. The tree and I had a conversation about it. Let's call this tree the Cheerful Oak.

Cheerful Oak: Just resist the precipitous desires. See how I have kept hold of my dying branch? Some trees feel driven to drop them, but not me. Stand firm! There can be this attraction to letting go, to giving up when things are painful or difficult. Resist it! So if your legs hurt cramped up in my branches, forget about it. Stay where you are. Ignore the desire to fall and the need to be more comfortable.

Me: OK. I didn't realise trees felt a desire to drop their branches.

CO: I'm not criticising. It's a personal choice. But, you see, I think it's influenced by how we're thought of.

Me: What do you mean?

CO: These diseases, they harm our heart wood, make us weak. Lead us to be brittle and fragile. I call to mind the way we were seen in the past as so strong. Hearts of Oak, you know? And I think that we are allowing ourselves to be damaged by the lack of cultural recognition. You people don't care about us, and for some reason some of us - especially those planted by you humans - respond to that lack of respect. That's what I think. So I say, no: I shall not be diminished by those thoughts and ideas. Instead, I will rekindle the old beliefs. I have a heart of oak and that's what I will be. Strong and resolute, see? No self pity. No surrender!

Me: You're cheerful about all of this.

CO: Yes. That too.

When I climbed down, I scraped my elbow, but it didn't matter. I felt strong and resolute! Cheerful, too.

I decided to follow a mammal path to the Goddess Tree - it did in fact take me directly to the Goddess Tree. On the way, I found another badger skull, a baby, and most of the bones. Very old and light.

At the Goddess Tree, I saw a hornets' nest - more of which in a later post - so I sat on the ride a few metres away.

She said that was fine.

The conversation with her, as it was before, was rather strange. I was thinking about the shape of her. And how the curves and asymmetry strike me as so beautiful. And wondering if David Rothenberg is right and that abstract art has helped us to appreciate beauty in nature.

The tree piped up at this.

Goddess Tree: Thing is, you humans are really better at mimicry than at creativity. You're all about something needing to be like something else. Categorising things as like this or like that. Individualism isn't your strong point.

I remembered research that compared baby chimps and baby humans. The baby humans would copy the way an adult did something even if it was not the best or easiest ways to do it. Chimps would cut to the chase. That research has always interested me.

Nonetheless, we've invented a heck of a lot more things than chimps have. The tree didn't seem interested in that.

What was interesting was her suggestion, as I watched the squirrels foraging and listened to birds calling, that I imagine all this backwards... like Goethe says about plants? Imagining their genesis from seed to present state. I took my mind back to the squirrels as foetuses, the birds as eggs, the tree as an acorn and a seedling. Time started to... well... no... the hold that the present usually has on me loosened and I was drawn into, not memory, but an imagined past... like I could slide backwards in my mind. What was this place like before the reservoir?

For some reason, the oak at the church ruins came to my mind - maybe because I imagined the Goddess Tree at that tree's age... maybe because of my feeling that the little tree feels he ought to have the same wisdom as trees as old as this (albeit not that old, for an oak) Goddess... and I asked her if she would communicate with him. Pass on wisdom. Act as matriarch.

"For sure," she said. "That is done."

As if it always has been and already had been done.

She said, "All places are one place." And then, "Imagine the Church Oak in the future."

It flashed into my mind! An image of that tree as old as the Druid Oak at Burnham Beeches! Vast-trunked, with a lowering heavy crown of glossy dark green. I could see it! I could see it!

I felt incredibly happy.

"You see," said the Goddess Tree, "all times are one time. What was, what is, what shall be. There is no distinction."

I asked if she meant like the block time idea. She said she guessed so. I asked if that implied determinism.

Goddess Tree: No. All the choices and reactions taken at any moment are as free as they can be given biology. They are not foreknown. It is just that they exist always. You are confusing predetermination with eternal existence.

Look, I am not sure that I entirely understand. Maybe she has a better understanding of reality than I do. And why not? She's been around a lot longer than me and her species has been around exponentially longer than ours.

I asked what humans would be like in the future. She suggested that I look. You know what I got? That when the Church Oak is as old as the Druid Oak (some 700 years in the future), this island will be, in effect, a wildlife zone. Either because there are so few of us, or because the us of the future have determined it so. I could not see anywhere else. Just here.

There are some humans though. And those humans look on the Church Oak with reverence. His heart of oak intact.

I sat there, on the ride, for about an hour. Not doing anything. Not even thinking much. Time had slipped away.