Retrospect is a marvellous thing. Looking back enables a viewpoint armed with knowledge that was not known when what has already been was yet to be. It permits the consideration of what might have been’s which could now never be. It is a useful means of self-castigation for actions regretted and appreciation for anything not treasured enough when it was still in existence. Its main role, however, is perhaps to teach us that lessons arise as and when they will. That wishing they had come about sooner serves no real purpose. And that trying to ensure we do not need to be taught the same lesson twice is a worthy aim if we seek a better future.
———————-
Anyone walking by might have thought that the old, yorkstone wall looked a little like it were pregnant. The large protrusion in its middle was of the same shape as the beautiful bump of a mother carrying a child. This bulge, though, was not down to the presence of a human foetus. It had arisen because of the enormous elm tree standing right behind it which had long since outgrown the confines of its edge-of-garden location. Sensing there may be some margin of movement within the wall against which it brushed, it had tentatively experimented with leaning a little into it. When the wall had remained standing, but had given a small amount, the elm had considered this tacit permission to keep on leaning. So lean it had. And as its trunk gently bowed in the direction of the road on the other side, the wall had continued to support it. Until, over the years, such a pronounced curvature had become apparent that those walking by chose to direct their steps to the edge of the path. Sometimes they even walked over the kerb and into the road for safety. The whole appearance of the tree and the rounded wall was too precarious for them to want to take their chances by passing overly closely to them. Everyone had accepted it for a considerable period of time. Noone had really commented or mentioned it to the person responsible for the situation. Until one day, the owner of the large Victorian home whose garden housed both the elm and the wall decided that enough was enough.
———————-
“I heard him say that he’s contacted the local authority,” an aspen tree just a few metres along from the elm announced. “He thinks you’re too much of a risk now.”
The elm, who had been slowly bringing itself around from a rather delicious late summer night’s sleep, didn’t realise that this pronouncement was directed towards itself. So it took a deep breath of mild, slightly humid air into its trunk, and carried on with its morning routine. Another breath in, and one out. One in and one out. Long, leisurely breaths to ensure that its trunk obtained maximum benefit from the inhales of rich, nourishing carbon dioxide.
“I was talking to you,” the aspen clarified, a little put out that its garden neighbour appeared to be ignoring it. But as they were friends, it decided the elm must simply not have heard it.
“Oh, I do apologise. I assumed you were in conversation with someone else.” The elm, never a tree to cause offence intentionally, felt it would be very remiss of it not to acknowledge its mistake.
“I’m afraid you’re the only tree that is deemed to be a risk right now,” the aspen explained. “I just wanted you to know.”
“A risk?” This was news to the elm who couldn’t think of anything it had done that would warrant it being considered a danger.
“Yes. Because of the wall. The way you’ve bent it. It’s at the stage where it could topple over and hurt people, and he can’t have that.”
“Oh!” The elm was taken aback. It had certainly not meant to cause any threat to people’s welfare. “But the wall has always been so giving.”
“Well it seems it’s given a little too much now. He wants to repair it but to do that, they’re saying that you may have to go.”
“Go? But where will I go? To another garden?” The elm didn’t like the idea of being rehoused. The amount of room in its current spot may have reduced as it had grown, but it was still very happy there.
“Nowhere. You won’t go anywhere. They mean that they’ll have to cut you down.”
———————-
To a tree, hearing the words cut you down is similar to a human hearing the words knock you out. Both verbs carry an ominous sense of discomfort and pain, with the addition of an outcome that is unpredictable. They could result in survival, in coming back from an act of aggression. Or they could result in something worse. Neither tree nor human generally wants to find out.
“Cut me down? But why would he do that?” The elm’s apprehension was replaced with a momentary curiosity as to why such action might be necessary.
“Because you’re pushing the wall over,” the aspen stated frankly. “And if it hits someone he’ll be in a whole lot of trouble.”
“Surely he can just mend the wall around me?” To the elm, this seemed a very logical course of action. “The stones may have been displaced a bit, so they could do with more mortar. But….”
“It’ll take a lot more than mortar. Apparently they’ll need to knock the section beside you down and start from scratch again.”
“But surely they can do that whilst I’m here?”
“They can. But it’s not really the wall that’s the problem.”
“Then what is?” The elm was now more curious, and more confused.
“You. You just keep on growing.”
The elm was astonished. “But I can’t just stop.”
“They realise that. And that’s why they may have to remove you completely.”
———————-
The view out across the road and through the sparse set of crab apple trees that formed the start of the woodland area was glorious. The large gaps between their trunks and over the top of the rhododendrons surrounding them allowed for the distant hills to be visible. Their undulations varied throughout the course of the year, being hidden in the white mists of wintery mornings and covered with bobbing, almost translucent, milky clouds as the spring evening lightened. Never, however, were they more lush and inviting than as the summer drew to a close. The elm had often dreamed of uprooting itself and taking a stroll across the tarmacked street, through the bushes and out into the open land beyond. It would dilly dally across the fields and over the hills, halting from time to time to take in the landscape all around. Or it would have, had it been able to extract itself from the site on which it stood. But it never hurt to daydream. It whiled away the long hours of treeness that might otherwise have been occupied in a less escapist way.
As the elm contemplated the peacefulness of the rolling land on the horizon, the evening after it had been informed of its potential fate, it appreciated it in a new way. The same way that anything that could be lost gains a new appeal, and a more profound meaning. That which may be taken away often endears itself to us even more, purely through the thought of its absence. The elm was now aware of this and wished to immerse itself in what it had whilst it was still able to do so. The sound of voices interrupted its focus on faraway places, as they brought the elm back into its roots. The voices became louder as they neared the tree.
“So they told me they were in a quandary.”
“Which is…?”
“That the tree was clearly here first, before the house was built.”
“Oh, so it’s that old. I hadn’t realised.”
“Yes, but at that time there obviously wasn’t the same awareness of how high and wide it would grow.” The man giving this explanation sounded saddened. “So they couldn’t plan for the road and path in the same way they could today.”
“That’s a shame,” the second man replied. “If they had you wouldn’t even have an issue.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t get to petition them or anything?”
“Not really, no.” There was a despondency in the first man’s tone. “I tried that. They claim to be interested in tree preservation, when really it seems they’re more interested in preventing human injury.”
“But it’s been there so long.”
“I know. And I suggested we could use wire fencing to help ensure any repair to the wall would be secure for the foreseeable future.”
“That didn’t satisfy them?”
“No, the tree surgeon came out and said that as long as the tree is growing there, the risk will be permanent.”
“So when will they decide?”
“Soon.” The first man said this word as though he really didn’t want it to mean what it did.
“And what will you do?”
“I’ll have to follow their rules. Perhaps plant some more young trees in its place.”
“We understand more now. I suppose more appropriate trees would stop this happening again.”
“They will.” But the first man didn’t sound overly concerned about whether they would or not. He was too occupied thinking about the prospect of losing his favourite tree.
———————
The aspen was sensitive enough not to say much after the two men had retreated back towards the house. It too had heard their discussion and knew that they were unlikely to have provided the elm with any consolation.
“This has been my home forever,” was all the elm eventually said. It was clear it was distressed at what it had heard.
“I know, and I would like for it to continue to be,” the aspen responded with compassion.
“But it won’t be up to you.”
“No.”
“My future is to be decided by those who don’t know what it’s like to be a tree.”
“It is.”
“And that makes me… very sad.” The elm’s voice faltered slightly as it admitted this.
“They can’t take away the fact that this is your home.” The aspen felt it was important to offer up some kind of comfort to its friend. It could only imagine how it was feeling.
“Thank you. No. No, they can’t. But they can take me away from it.” The elm saw little point in avoiding the truth. If what it had heard was correct, its days in its garden home were numbered.
———————-
A week later, the man who owned the house and the garden which was the abode for the elm, the aspen and several other large trees returned. This time he was alone. He wandered over to the wall against which the elm was now leaning heavily and ran his hand over the rough curvature of the stones. They seemed, by some feat of magical engineering, to be holding together, upright, despite the angle at which some of them were now positioned and the mere fragments of mortar left between them. It truly was a miracle that this part of the wall had not disintegrated and slipped down onto the path a long time ago. Looking out at the same view that the elm had relished for the duration of its life, the man was reminded of his fortune at living where he did. They had chosen well when they relocated with their young family from the city suburbs to the edge of the much smaller town.
He lifted a hand and stroked the uneven, ridged bark of the elm’s trunk fondly. It was on the lower branches of this tree that he’d mounted the swing for his son and daughter. They’d swung there happily for many hours during their childhood summers. They used its shade to protect them from the hottest of the sun’s rays overhead whilst they had sat and read some of their first books underneath its abundance of large oval leaves. He remembered teaching them about one half of the elm leaf being shorter than the other. They’d laughed at how that made the blade that its pointy end created look a bit lop-sided. In autumn, the children had loved wading through the multi-coloured array of leaves that fell all around the tree. They’d taken some of them indoors and glued them to paper to create artwork in tones of russet, gold and mahogany. Whenever they’d been away visiting relatives, or for their annual holiday, the elm leaning outwards was the first tree they’d caught a glimpse of as they rounded the corner on to their own street. Home. The tree had so many dear memories associated with it. That was why it was the whole family’s favourite.
“I tried,” the man said softly. His voice too wavered as he said this. “We wanted to keep you.”
I know, the elm thought.
“We all love you.”
I love you too.
“The world is changing. People seem to value new rules more than they understand the value that an old tree brings to the world.”
This time, the elm had nothing to offer in response.
———————-
The day the authorities came to uproot the elm felt more like the beginnings of autumn than late summer. The nip in the dawn air meant early dog walkers had to don hats and gloves anew. Small puffs of whitish vapour appeared before their faces, the heat of their own breath visible against the cold of the surrounding atmosphere. They moved along briskly to keep warm, clapping and rubbing their hands when forced to stop and wait for their canine companion to sniff out the right spot to relieve itself. Daily salutations were reduced to a minimum, with most including a reference to the drop in temperature.
A van with a large winch upon its trailer pulled up beside the pregnant piece of wall. Its driver eyed the rotund bump with suspicion. He re-started the engine and reversed backwards along the kerb, parking up again in front of a piece of solid, relatively flat wall. You could never be too careful. Jumping out of the vehicle, he trotted into and up the long driveway leading to the house. A few minutes later he returned with the owner. Within half an hour, the van had been repositioned on a piece of grass between the elm and the drive. The other men in the van had lifted the necessary equipment out of it and were preparing for the imminent removal of the offending garden item.
“Let’s get the trunk secured with these,” the van driver said to the other two men, holding up sections of long, thick green cord. “It’s not going anywhere until we know we can bring it down safely away from the wall.”
The other men followed his instructions. One leaned an extendable ladder up against the tree and then began to climb it, holding on tight to lengths of the cord. The other held on firmly to the ladder’s base. “Loop it round as close to the top as you can get it!” he shouted up after his colleague. The other man obliged, taking his time to ensure the cord fit snugly and was knotted several times.
The same action was repeated at various places along the trunk as the man worked his way back down to the ground. Once he had set foot back on the grass, the driver and the ladder holder trailed the three or four long lengths of cord dangling down from the tree over to the winch. They performed some adroit movements – evidencing their previous experience with the same activity – and secured the cord ends to the winch, so it could hold them taught when the time came. As they walked back over towards the tree, the owner of the house watched one of them bend down and pick up a chainsaw. His heartbeat increased until it was thumping rapidly in his chest. Whilst steadying himself for the moment he had been dreading, he heard a familiar young voice call across to him from the other end of the garden. “Dad? Dad! What are they doing? Don’t let them! They have to stop!” The house owner’s daughter, now in her mid-teens, ran as fast as her bare feet would carry her across the dew-laden grass and over towards the group of men.
“Sweetheart, you’ve got no shoes on. You could hurt yourself. Go and get some.”
“You don’t care if the tree gets hurt, so why does it matter what happens to me?” The teenager’s voice was full of fury. The other men watched on, sensing that they might be about to witness some domestic entertainment.
“The tree I can do nothing about. It’s out of my hands. You, however, I’m legally in charge of. Please put some shoes on if you want to keep having this discussion.”
Both his daughter and the team of tree surgeons had to admire him. He had an air of authority that commanded respect. So his daughter, screwing her hands up into balled fists, turned on her heel and ran back the way she’d come. “You’d best do this whilst she’s inside,” he called over to the men.
At this go ahead, the team began to point at the tree. They held their arms at varying angles, to indicate the plan they were going enact. In the process, there was another call from the other side of the garden and the owner’s daughter reappeared. She was sprinting this time, in the trainers she had managed to find and fling on at lightning speed.
“If you’re taking it, then you’re taking me too!” the girl shouted as she ran up to and past the men and her father. When she reached the elm, she pushed herself up against its trunk and wrapped her arms around it. She clamped them tightly to its bark. Her father put his head in his hands and started to shake it slowly from side to side. The men stood looking on in amazement, unsure as to what to do.
The house owner lifted his head, a resigned look on his face. “Would you give us a moment, gents?” he asked.
“No problem,” the van driver said. “We’ll just wait in there.” He pointed to the van’s cabin and gave both of his colleagues a nudge to indicate that they should head towards it.
The house owner took a few steps over to where his daughter was now defending her favourite tree. He, in turn, had to admire her for her bravery. He’d raised her to have the courage of her convictions. If anyone was responsible for this outburst, he was. He would therefore have to bring it to a conclusion. “Honey, we have to let the men do their work.”
“Let them. With me here. See what happens.” His daughter was defiant. Her eyes shone with the passion of principled youth.
“You know they aren’t allowed to do anything that would cause a risk to human safety.”
“Good. Then as long as I’m here the tree is safe.”
“But….”
“Dad, do something. You solve problems. That’s what dads do. Solve this one so we don’t lose what we love.” The girl’s eyes pleaded with her father’s. Inside the teenage body he could still see the girl child whose father had been able to right every wrong. If it had been anyone else…. But it wasn’t. She was his flesh and blood. So he had to try. What she saw him do was what she would then go out into the world to repeat herself.
“Give me a minute,” the house owner said. He placed his hand on his daughter’s shoulder, giving it a light squeeze in the comforting way he always had. To tell her everything would be OK. And then he headed back in the direction of the van.
———————-
As the sun set that evening, the air was once again brisk. A cold front blowing in from the eastern side of the country they claimed. It could last the whole week. The usual colours that were gifted to the sky’s audience were not affected, thankfully. Like watercolour trickling over canvas, shades of violet, rose and deep tangerine were dispersed across the horizon. The elm inhaled the refreshing air into its trunk. It was absorbed right down to its roots, which were still planted steadfastly in the ground. If trees could have sighed, it would have done. Instead, it let oxygen seep out through every crevice and fissure in its rugged trunk. The tree equivalent of an exhalation of relief.
“How long have we got?” The teenage girl asked, standing beside her father and observing the same view of the sun descending into its daily sleep over the distant hills.
“A few months perhaps. As long as it takes for them to appeal against our proposal.”
“Will that be enough time?” There was anxiety in the daughter’s voice. Her question was really an entreaty for assurance that the elm’s future in the garden was guaranteed.
“I don’t know. It will have to be.”
“And will they win?”
“Not necessarily. It’s not been done before but with a reputable planner and a good solicitor, I think we can make it work.”
The elm listened in to the humans who had made their home in the same space that it had dwelled for decades longer. It couldn’t verbalise its gratitude. But it could show it in other ways. By decorating itself with a plethora of rich red, lemon and pumpkin hues over the coming season. By allowing snowflakes to sit magically upon its branches in the months to come. And by dressing itself in its finest greenery and hiding songbirds when spring came around once again.
The house owner placed once of his palms against the elm, rubbing his fingers over the gaps and cracks in its bark. The other he placed on his daughter’s shoulder once more. I love you. His hands spoke the words silently to both his first born and this, his favourite tree. I love you too, each of their solid, living, breathing forms replied.
For my neighbour. May you fight for what is right. X