This tree’s name is Bartholomew Bartisimus Folistorious III and he is from the Chivalric Order of Beech Knights. As you can tell, he is bent over backwards in order to serve. Bartholomew’s service is a sacred service. He was called upon when he was a mere sapling and takes his duty very seriously, as indeed he should. It is said that a wren first proposed the service to him, and that an entire intergenerational murder of crows performed the ceremony once he said yes. It took that many cawing and bobbing crows to call up the ancient animating power from the deep. Bartholomew’s principal job is to connect the earth with the sky. You can see his heart-centre is open to the heavens and that his tree-arms and nose are similarly thrust skywards, linking the energy of above with below. Through this link, he draws down the cosmogonic forces of the
It is an undeniable fact that some woods are more alive than others. I should know, I have walked enough of them. Some woods, like this beech woods near Upper Enham, have a thickness to the air. Once you walk in, you feel yourself pass through some kind of invisible wall, safe in the liquid embrace of the life of the forest. There is an overwhelming sense of abundance and you hear something beyond the edge of sound. You cannot but be aware of the unseen energy of the forest. Feel it pushing up against your body, providing you with some essential thing you didn’t even know was missing. There is something undisturbed about some woods and in that peace, the trees swell out from themselves, filling the spaces between them with their spirit bodies. So when you walk—a quiet, slow walk of wonder—you come to know the life of the
Quite a long time ago, people were much, much smaller than they are now. This is where our fairy legends come from, only so much time has passed that we’ve forgotten that the little people were actually us. Bigstickasaurus hasn’t forgotten though, he’s still full of the stories from when we were small. He even told me one. In those days, we, the little people, would suspend ourselves from his spikes like ornaments on Christmas trees. Our ancestors would sit there, swinging backwards and forwards, shouting out ideas for a full moon show, practicing under cover of the new. The full moon shows were always spectacular and involved incredible circus feats. After they were finished, the little people would jump off their swings all at the same time, and perform synchronised somersaults as they landed. Then, after a prolonged series of curtsies and bows to a very loud round of applause,
They say ‘history repeats itself’ and it does, of course. I’ve got a PhD in history, so you can trust that I know what I am talking about. Anyway, this tree is actually a very old tree and it has lived through a time which in some ways resembles the one we have now. Be prepared then reader, for this is a cautionary tale. The reason this tree on Linchmere Common is bendy, is because during its lifetime the sun disappeared. As such, the tree, not having eyeballs to see, just gradually reoriented itself to a second source of power and energy: the molten core of the earth. When the sun came back, the tree turned upwards again to the original, greater source of energy. It’s stayed growing that way for some time now, but I have it on good authority that it may well have to make another turn soon.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who always tried her hardest at everything. It was a time when the earth was dry and made of rubble and dust. A time when everything was scorched, a little red, and very, very dry. The girl was the last girl but she did her best not to think about that. She walked the land picking up this thing and that, rearranging them into interesting shapes so that she might populate the sparse land with something like creation. So that when her eye scanned a horizon, she would know where she had lately been and where was still to traverse. As time went by, the last girl learnt to dig into the ground to find things to make her sculptures with. She found bones and roots, rocks and ancient mycelial webs, shells and fossils: the myriad remnants of an ancient world. She brought