Woods, like other wild places, can kindle new ways of being pr cognition in people, can urge their minds differently … It is valuable and disturbing to know that oak trees can take three hundred years to grow, three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die. Such knowledge, seriously considered, changes the grain of the mind.*
Robert Macfarlane

Most people don’t know the names of these relatives; in fact, they hardly even see them.  Names are the way we humans build relationships, not only with each other, but with the living world.  I’m trying to imagine what it would be like going through life not knowing the names of plants and animals around you … I think it would be a little scary and disorientating – like being lost in a foreign city where you can’t read the street signs.**
Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Persian King Xerxes, lover of
sycamores, once
halted his army as they marched
to fight with Greece, to contemplate
one might example;
Henry David Thoreau would tramp miles
in all weathers to keep an appointment with
a tree neighbour or friend;
Antoine Saint-Exupéry once flew tribal leaders
from Libya to Senegal who promptly wept
at the sight of trees reaching away from the
airstrip, never having seen
such beings before.

Our longest living, and perhaps
wisest, neighbours are not human –
Before our recent move from Edinburgh,
We would visit some an eight hundred year old oak wood,
Delighting in the presence of these ancient Quercus,
With so many stories to tell, so much pain endured, and yet,
Here they were in leaf and acorn.

Here’s a thought that came to me and that
I’m going to act upon,
And I thought to offer you to try out –
If you wish:
To find a local tree that I can visit and
spend time with throughout the year,
To find out the tree’s name, and
perhaps something of its age, to
listen to its stories, and gratefully accept its
introduction to the neighbourhood.

You may also wish to add the
delightful story of Bertolt –
For children of all ages; the book is a
wonderful tale of a young child and his tree friend –
You may find most of it
in this episode of
Maria Popova’s The Marginalian.

*Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places;
**Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.