wangari maathai is fantastic.

http://greenbeltmovement.org/

this weekend I climbed a sycamore tree.

Hanging like a monkey from a great greengrey limb I am immersed in the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind. I have become so domesticated that I have forgotten how loudly leaves rustle when there are ten million of them all doing it at once.

i get up on top of the horizontal branch. I stand cautiously and wobble. Then I begin to creep along. I fantasise that I am pantherlike. It is good. The branch is patient. Every part of my being is involved in this upward shuffle.

Suddenly I catch an unmistakeable whiff on the breeze.

I’ve got dogshit on my trainer. Fuck! It’s all over the branch. Where did that fucking shit come from? Is it on Felix as well? My panther moment has been betrayed. I’m freaking out; is it on my hands? How am I going to get everything clean, out in the woods?

I get down, swearing.

I had another tree dream

My little boy and I are sitting inside a car on an expanse of tarmac. The tarmac is derelict, cracked, with plants pushing through it. The car is parked underneath a large oak tree. Time is passing. Debris drops from the tree onto the car: galls, leaves, acorn shells, discarded chrysalids, aphids’ honeydew, birdshit, bits of twig, dead beetles. Gradually, the car is getting buried and decomposing with us inside it. Spiders are making webs over the car and moss is growing up the door frames.

We observe the layers thickening on the windscreen and the daylight becoming muted. I am happy; Felix is in my arms. I am reminded of the profoundly pleasurable occasions when as a child I would sit in my mother’s car when it went through the carwash, or the times when I drowsed in my child seat in the back, being driven home in a rainstorm.

from ben my friend from leeds

ben told me:

i used to play in the woods when i was a kid. i’d often run away to the forest on the horizon ( a game wood, they bred pheasants for shooting there so it was a bit private and therefore extra interesting. bit grim too i think, gibbets and stuff). but i liked the sense of escape from family life, and suburban life also, into the wild so to speak. it was my wish to run away for much longer but i never quite got it together i’m afraid. i think it would have been a formative experience. the woods stayed something of an obsession until my mid teens, when the power of amplified guitar and drum machine took over.

tree aphid sabotage

I own a car. I have spent at least as much time feeling bad about this as I have spent actually in the car. It is parked in the street outside our house. Our street is a rare treasure – lined with elm trees. The aphids in the trees have woken up for the season, and begun squirting honeydew out of their bums onto the cars beneath. My car is covered in the sticky stuff. Recently I was driving at night, and the lights of oncoming cars became huge blurs and smears in the dried honeydew. I could hardly see out. I thought that the honeydew, combined with the huge splats of seagull shit which I had neglected to scratch off the glass, made a highly effective form of anti-car sabotage. I imagined crashing because of being too apathetic to wipe tree aphids’ bum pee off the car windscreen. It made me smile.

my tree dream

I had this dream about a month ago:

I am in a war zone.

Night is falling.

There is a crisis.

A massive oak tree, full of people, has been set alight by one side in the battle. This force wants to destroy the tree and the people who have made it their home. It is a terrible scene. The tree is roaring. Millions of leaves igniting crumpling orange, all flames rushing upwards into a blistering ball of fire.

The people in the tree are stuck inside this burning cage, standing on their platforms and ladders and clinging to branches. Some of them manage to leap to earth through the flames. They are tiny, like workers jumping from a burning tower.

I have no idea what to do. It is like I’ve just stumbled across a mass lynching. In fact, all the perpetrators seem to be middle-aged white men in too-tight shirts and slacks. They are standing around, looking nonchalant.

I am helpless, shouting incoherently, waving my arms. Incredulous.

There is no water.

I’m desperate to get the others out of the oak tree. I am witnessing an atrocity far beyond anything I have ever experienced in my sheltered life, and I have no idea what to do. It is devastating. Weird sounds of impotent rage and grief come out of me as I look from the faces of the perpetrators to the panicking people in the tree.

Then something as shocking and incredible as the crime itself happens:

All the flames are extinguished at once. The tree is unscathed. The leaves are still green. No-one is hurt.

We have just witnessed a miracle.

There is silence, uncomprehending, then cries of delight and amazement, wild whoops of joy, people rushing to embrace the tree, people falling to the floor, kissing the earth, awestruck, wordless. Divine intervention.

But we don’t even have time to absorb this information before water cannons and powerful searchlights are turned on us. Someone catches me in a beam of dazzling light and I can’t seem to get out of it. I try to dodge but I am locked in. I see a hedge across the field and run for it, scampering up the bank, squirming underneath the hedgerow – and abruptly I’m in a long chamber. The huge hedge is hollow, and the space inside it forms a room.

The searchlight is glaring intensely at the hedge and shafts of the light are coming through the gaps in the foliage, illuminating the space. In here it’s like a longhouse, warm, empty, soil and rammed earth. I want to stay here, crouch in the shadows, but I know there are people coming to find me. At one end of the chamber there is a doorway. I go through it, into a brightly lit office space with a photocopier, a printer, a potted plant and a goldfish in a bowl. This is the secret HQ of the treeburning enemy. I am right at the heart of their command centre. They live behind the hedge.

I am welcomed by the men working there as though I am part of their organisation. Am I?
The invading force is inside the colonised people who fight it. And close-up, the members of this force don’t seem like enemies: they seem like everyday people, workers, dads.

A tree story from Meaveen who moved to Australia

Despite her proclaimed anxiety about climbing this vast tree, Meaveen is one of the bravest people I know. She is a pioneer. Here is her story:

The Gloucester Tree

Around 10 years ago, when i first arrived down-under, i had a few days spare in western Australia and went on a little tour of the south west coast, part of which included ‘the Gloucester tree’, of which i knew nothing, except that our tour guide had said we could climb it if we liked. Apparently, it was the highest look-out in the southern hemisphere, but despite its vast trunk, there was no real sense of its staggering height from the base because when you looked up, all you could see was the trunk disappearing into dense hues of green foliage. There was a rule that only 3 people could go up or down at any one time, but the tree-climbing police were not in evidence that day, and there were a good few more than 3 up the tree.

The pins looked sturdy but slippery, and about a metre wide, and there was a thin mesh of chicken wire circling the tree and pins, which presumably was to stop people projecting outwards if they fell, and giving them more of a chance to grab a lower pin in their tumble.

I was thinking at this point that climbing it seemed rather a risk-laden endeavour, but at that moment an elderly woman emerged from the leafy ceiling, descending the iron pins spiralling round the trunk, seemingly unperturbed by the experience. I decided to go up. It was like climbing up the far-away tree, green leaves everywhere, no sense of how high i was, round and round and round and round and round and round, concentrating, trusting the tree, gripping the pins hard, moving hands one at a time, testing the foothold on each pin before putting weight down, and still round and round, and sometimes there were people coming down, and it was a very careful crossing of pinned paths every time. Eventually i looked up and saw a platform above me – the top! But no, it was just the half-way resting platform. I climbed on. Round and round and round and round, i felt dizzy with all the roundings, but at the same time the tree was so big and strong it lent an air of protective benevolence to the ascent. Finally i arrived at the top, and it was magnificent – great swathes of leafy littler tree tops stretching out below, with views for miles of the surrounding countryside. In the past, before helicopters, planes and satellite images were widely used, this tree had an exceptionally important role to play as a fire watchtower, and as i looked around i thought how this one immense, tall, strong and generous tree must have helped save many lives and livelihoods (and its fellow trees) from incineration. i felt proud of the tree.

I made a very cautious and respectful journey back down to earth.

(i just googled it – it’s 61 metres high)

my tree in bristol

I wrote this in 2005 and found it last week. I was very sad to lose the tree outside the house in bristol where I was living with my new baby and his father. That tree had been a guardian, and it had made me feel sane and calm. I watched its felling from start to completion. Afterwards, I sensed that I would not be living there much longer either.

They are cutting down my tree. It is visceral. From towering source and shelter of life to woodchip in what seems like moments. I am watching great soft bendy boughs being pushed into the woodchipper and emerging as pale green dust, sprayed into a pile on the back of a truck. I wonder how many spiders there are amongst the leaves. I wonder where the ravens will nest next year, where the blackbird will perch to sing its song.

Tree: guardian, repository of life and spirit, safe haven, friend, ancient living thing.

The five men are brisk and work efficiently, amiably as a team, communicating over the din of the chipper and the chainsaws by means of exaggerated gestures, whistles, nods, laughs. The two younger, more athletic-looking ones are up in the branches smiling, with chainsaws dangling from their waistbands as they clamber. The others haul branches from the ground. Bigger pieces of wood are stacked rather than chipped.

Time passes and after a long tea break the tempo of the work changes, becoming much more determined and focused. The man at the top of the naked trunk looks small and vulnerable but his manner is resolute.

Dealing with the very top is the hardest part, requiring the most skill.

The two stripped forks of the trunk are dismantled one at a time. Alarmingly large sections are sawn through and plummet to the earth, landing and bouncing slightly within inches of the men on the ground, who immediately set about sawing them into logs and loading them into a truck. The log-lugging looks like work to make guts herniate and backs dislocate. “Fully Insured”, proclaims the sign on the side of their van. The happy-go-lucky demeanour of the start, with the climbers resembling boys at play, is replaced by an evident mathematical precision, teamwork and timing.

The whole group’s energy has become fixed on the endgame now. The second climber assists the first by using his bodyweight at the end of a rope looped around the top of the precarious-looking highest branch, to keep it from bending or breaking under the weight of the top man. So does one of the men on the ground. When the sun comes out the men are suddenly exposed to its full glare; there is no longer any shade. Sweat drips into eyes and forms huge dark patches on tee shirts.

Shockingly quickly, my tree is reduced to a stump. The men sweep up. Before departing, one of them leaves me a gift: a stool carved from the trunk with a chainsaw.

The sky from my window is bigger now.

Suddenly a new swathe of neighbourhood comes into view: tiled roofs, scaffolding, an overgrown path. The men will plant a new sapling before they leave.

Watching, I am reminded of the time I spent at the site of Newbury bypass during the road protests in the winter of 1995. Trees, our guardians, repositories of life and spirit, safe havens, most ancient living things; stripped to skeletons, with lone human figures tied defiantly at the tops of their now-frail remains. Each tree, systematically destroyed underneath the person at the top, who is left waiting in the snow for the inevitable crane and handcuffs.

Jo’s naked tree story

This story comes from a woman with whom I did my teacher training. I think she and I both struggled a bit with the  mantra which was drummed into us by our course convenor: “You are an agent of the institution [i.e. the school you work at]“. I wish I had the bottle to run around naked when I wanted to.

Time: March, 04
Place Epping Forest, London
Was as home in South London feeling bonkers – needed some nature. Trees talk to me – always have, so I went to meet them. Got tube out east to Epping Forest. Walked from the tube station to what felt like the edge of London town… took my clothes off, stretched my body and hugged the first tree that invited me, for ages… heart to heart. Then ran around singing LOUDLY and did cartwheels and tried to run really fast from a run-up to tree trunks and run up the side of the tree without using my hands. I climbed some trees and hung from the branches, feeling my whole bidy stretch witht he gravity and hung on for as long as I could trying to swing my body more and more til my arms said no more. Then I found the friendliest tree and sat in it for ages. Even though it was cold and I was bare I felt really warm… then i put my clothes back on and
felt like i was a coat-hanger or something like that and my clothes felt nice but funny. Then I walked back into London town and got on the tube. I felt yummy and like I had a delicious secret, like I had just met a lover and made love for hours and hours.
Then I was less bonkers for a while, maybe forever…?

a story from my american brother-in-law, ben

when i was a smaller boy, our family hosted an esteemed physician from
the U.K. for around a week. her name was alice stewart; she was renown
for her work on effects of radiation on the thyroid and came to
consult with my father who, at the time, was doing a lot of work to
investigate the radioactive leakage at hanford, in the Washington
desert. she took an interest in playing some pitch and toss with me in
the backyard one day, i think after having watched me pitching for
hours at the sprung toss-back device i had in those baseballful years.
she was honestly pretty bad at throwing the ball and within a few
tries, had thrown it into my father’s orchard, snapping a small limb
from one of the perimeter trees. i felt my viscera contracting and
heaving, predicting the reaction of my dad. i might have let out kind
of a shriek of alarm. the doctor and i examined the tree, she with no
trepidation and me with anxiety and slight trembling. she ordered me
to fetch some masking tape; i thought it her idea of a joke, or a way
of distracting me from my father’s OCD over his trees. she proceeded
to tape up the young limb and explained that she wasn’t joking, that
it would probably re-graft to the tree. it was so simple, i had never
imagined how useful tape could be. for years i knew where that limb
was in the yard… it grew in that part of my mind that anticipated
magic, and in that part of the yard the doctor had touched.

several nights ago a drunk driver ran over four of my new magnolia
trees in the parking strip at my house. it’s funny, the first feeling
upon seeing this was that gut wrenching knowledge that FATHER is mad,
that somebody’s in trouble. i could smell the grass in my old
backyard, and see the light shining behind that wise old woman
throwing errant baseballs. the second thought was one of relief: that
i wasn’t witness to this transgression… as i played out in my mind my
treatment of the driver. i busied about the trees for a few hours,
trying to re-root some of the branches that looked like they might
survive with some hormone help; i mourned the dead ones and cried a
little. the driver had taken out a very nice japanese pine i planted
on the corner; i called my dad to consult on the likelihood that this
species could re-graft. he said, “that tree is dead.” i felt like the
doctor for a moment, like, “what’s wrong with a little effort with
some tape.” i went out and carefully duct-taped the tree back into
place and said some prayers for the roots that are wondering where the
hell the rest of the tree is, that are pumping sap up into nothing,
now into a duct tape wound treatment.

it’s a longshot, but i’m hoping the tree will make it.

i wish that tree had been four years older and STOPPED the car that
ran into it. i wish alice stewart was still alive so i could call her
and tell her my sadness about this lovely tree. i wish sometimes that
men were different than they are.