Mother Oak

Today I sat with an old, old oak tree.

She was much bigger than her neighbours and I asked how she had survived. The message I received was that she lived on the borderline. This tree is on the boundary between two golf courses - trees in hedgerows have a chance to grow old.

But it wasn't just about the boundaries between our human-created parcels of land... trees live between realms; between air and earth, making life from fire and water.

I considered this further... the idea of living in the in-between places. Between birth and death; heaven and earth; material and spiritual; sacred and profane. the place where dichotomies dissolve.

I asked how we should live. No hesitation: take only what you need.

But, I said, there are so many of us... what happens, how do you cope if there are too many trees? She said, "There cannot be too many trees as they cannot grow where there is not space."

This seemed to me, I thought, rather cold. So I asked if she was compassionate and the force of her response was like my cells were invaded by the essence of tree. I felt as if I had been in the centre of a split micro-second tornado and then enveloped into safety. I felt profoundly accepted. By a tree. Yeah, I know.

That's when I took a picture. Not this picture, but another one, in which I looked exactly like my mother. And I knew this tree was a mother tree.

I said, what is knowledge? And she said, "My knowledge is wood. I am my knowledge. I know what has been and what has been becomes me. There is no knowledge without happening."

I didn't fully understand this until I listened to Mary Graham explaining Aboriginal knowing in this interview.

It's not surprising that a tree would be aligned with a philosophy so related to place and experience.

I then asked, "Is this real or am I just answering my own questions?" And there was silence. But I guess I know what has been and what has become me.

When I got up to leave and put my hand to the bark, wanting to say something, something right, the tree cut in, telling me that there was nothing I could tell her of my heart, for when we connected, in that zing moment of mutual acknowledgement, the connection was made... like fungal fibres - complete and lasting.

And I thought of my mother, who died in 1995, and felt the connection. Of my brother down in Devon, of the love of my life and I felt the connection. I thought of the sleeping hare, the robins in the garden, the dead pets, the momentary passing special acquaintances (human, non-human, and some of them places) and felt the connection. Alive.

I feel like a crazy person writing this.

At the time, I was there with a tree. Oh, I asked how she spoke English and she said she didn't speak, she communicated and I translated them into English. Makes sense. That's how I think after all. I was distracted at one point, a text, an email, and when I dropped the phone, I said to the tree, "Do you get distracted?" She said, and this part is really interesting, "Aspects focus on different things at the same time. That's the benefit of having distributed intelligence." We humans have organs for sensing, thinking and so on - a tree senses everywhere, computes everywhere.

It gave me a lift - this, and the bats and the ants after the car-tastrophe (still not resolved as I write - but it should be by the time you read).

Maybe I feel more rooted.