THE MIGHTY OAK

You may remember I took a photograph of this beautiful oak tree on 7th November when the leaves were still quite green.  I decided to go for a walk over to my field early this afternoon and before the promised rain,  to see if the leaves had changed colour and they had, so here is the 200 year old tree in all its glory - still with lots of leaves, but they are definitely more orange now.

A Blip friend recommended a book entitled “Wilding” by Isabella Tree - what an appropriate name - which sets out how she and her husband “took a spectacular leap of faith and handed their 3,500 acres back to nature”.  It is a fascinating book and because it goes into things in some depth, I am having to “read” it all rather than my usual action of “skimming” a book, which is no bad thing.

One of the interesting things Ted Green points out in the first chapter of the book is, “As a tree grows old, it sometimes lowers its branches towards the ground, for stability, like an old man using a walking stick.  To the modern eye, this self-buttressing tendency is considered a weakness and the walking stick - the lowering branch is generally removed.  We have a fixed image of how a tree should look, like a child’s drawing with a straight trunk and a pom-pom on top.  We don’t want to see anything else.  We deny the tree its ability to grow old, to gain character, to be itself.  It’s like taking away my bus pass and giving me a facelift, so I always look fifty.”

Mr. HCB has already read the book and we discussed quite a lot of it before I had started to read it - I think we will be having a lot more discussions as I plough my way through and read it carefully.  

Things that brought me joy today:

Being able to go for a walk in “my field” 
Having dry feet even though I squelched through many boggy parts
Having the time to read a book slowly and savour it.

“The acorn does not know that it will become a sapling. 
     The sapling does not remember when it was an acorn, 
          and only dimly senses that it will become a mighty oak. 
The oak recalls fondly when it was a sapling, 
     loves being a mighty oak, 
          and joyfully creates new acorns.” 
J. Earp

P.S.  Thank you for your kind comments for yesterday’s Blip - all of which are much appreciated.