That oak and stag thing...

A while back, I went to visit the Goddess Tree specifically because I was wondering if my feeling off-colour was due to my age and gender. Obviously, the tree did not diagnose menopause. Nor indeed did a subsequent blood test. Though circumstances would suggest that something is going on in the unmentionable areas. And, possibly, in some mentionable ones.

I have not been "ill" for years. I don't think I have missed a day's work since 2012, when I was kicked in the head by a horse and in a coma. Making getting to work rather challenging.

But, last few months, I can't say I have felt "well". Faintness, migraines, nausea, stomach cramps, fatigue.

I suspect I am dying. But it could take some time.

Anyway, none of the trees have been entirely supportive regarding my health concerns. The Ancient Oak in the copse told me to leave my "selfish baggage" behind. A hollowed out ash with die-back basically said, "You think YOU have problems???" Fair enough.

This Oak King was, at least, friendly.

On the way, I had seen the remains of four or so large black birds. Judging by the size, I suspected ravens. All together, though? To shoot that many ravens would be hard. They were on a ride in a patch of woodland around a young oak tree. Maybe they'd been poisoned. One had a head, but I couldn't bring myself to inspect it too carefully.

I cut off the ride into the trees, looking at the many ash trees with signs of disease. I felt them saying, "Just leave everything alone now. Just leave. Just let us sort it out." I was trying to suggest that humans are not separate from nature, but entangled in it. The trees weren't having it. "You cut yourselves out by your thinking. You made yourself separate with your concepts. That's what enabled you to destroy that which it will never allow you to fix."

It was something of a relief to see the Oak King. I sat in my customary place. Ate soup. Drank coffee. Watched pheasants. There was nothing but pheasants and pigeons. Feral birds and birds there for the shooting. Our creations. The pheasants eating and eating.

The tree was all about interdependence and entanglement. About connections and co-operation and the infinite dimensions of interlaced causal processes. Too much ever to comprehend. Only possible to inhabit that complexity by being it.

His view is that humans dislike what they cannot comprehend, narrate, draw pictures of. They resist such rambunctious complexity. They have the hubristic belief that they can contain and restrain, but they can't because complexity always escapes. Yet humans think more knowledge and more thinking will enable action that is effective. They are wrong and yet they act with certainty. As well as with selfishness. And hence anything they do is destined to make things worse.

Such comments were hardly encouraging.

Yet all the trees, the ashes and the oak, had been welcoming. Saying they appreciated the acknowledgement and the reverence.

Of course. I am insane as well as unwell.

I walked back. So tired. So damn tired. And in another section of wood, ten feet from me, a roebuck leapt from cover and sprang away, casting his magic over my day.

This is entanglement.