The Tree Path
The Tree Path
Trees - all the year round
The Green Man
May morning sees many a leafy fellow shambling across hillsides, shaking through streets; from Rochester to Knutsford the Green Man, deciduous dancer, still eludes explanation. In his festive form he seems to be a harbinger of spring, a celebration of regeneration. You may come across him in other guises: leafy faces carved in the cloisters, misericords and roof bosses of cathedral or parish church; Robin Hood in stories of the greenwood, and in local plays from Devon to Scotland. He must be ancient, why does he persist?
Of the creatures with which we share the world, trees, above all, have engaged our imagination. Now, for most of us, they are simply 'there' in the street, down the lane, on the village green. We hardly give them a second thought. Not so our forbears who must have thrilled to the warmth and the green shoots after the perils of winter, the return of hope. The moment of new leaves meant new life for all. A cause for celebration.
In Britain, we have inherited a land dominated by deciduous trees. We virtually carved ourselves out of the forest, and went on to make half timbered houses, tea clippers and men of war, elm water pipes, hawthorn hedges, greenwood chairs, all from the trees about us; we ate and fed our beasts from apples, hazelnuts, beech mast, acorns. Family names Sawyer, Cooper, Woodward, Turner tell of forbears whose tasks related to wood. Our cultural connection with trees is there to be read all around us. As you pull down the blind with the little acorn at the end of the string, think that in the Channel Isles they still remember that the oak is the tree which attracts lightning: that toggle is a symbolic protector of the house.
Many oaks stand vigil over their village, the centre of the place, the very reason perhaps, why the village is there. The tree is more than a botanical specimen or a simple landmark, it is the centre of the place. Like venerable trees all over the world, it is the symbol of longevity and stability under its shade news comes and goes, the market is held, people gather to talk and to make decisions. Names are still carved in the bark of the 800 year old oak at Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire, how many tales could it tell? But Gospel Oak, one of the many where Wesley drew a crowd, is no longer to be found except as a name on a map of north London. As the tree is crowded out by changes large and small, the place it has created loses meaning, dies soulless, Its identity erased, no one cares to linger any more.
