Horse chestnut dreaming

This was the reason for my visit to the horse chestnut trees.

That's a third of my collection and I just skimmed the surface. The three trees are on an island in the middle of a ploughed, tilled and seeded field. The conkers just rot away.

OMG is that one of my WHITE hairs on that hat? Huh.

Anyway, they are lovely trees. I think when I was a kid I would have said that they were my favourite trees. For the conkers. In spring, they have the most glorious flowers. And all through the growing season, those gorgeously shaped leaves are a stunning green. Old horse chestnuts can have wonderfully gnarled trunks, though they are not the longest lived trees - maybe 300.

As I collected the conkers, I thought of all the energy the trees have expended to make so many of these fruits. One tree specialised in huge nuts; another had many twins and triplets inside the spiky cases. The ground was covered with them. And no baby trees. And no creatures to take the conkers and plant them. All that effort wasted. It felt sad. The trees had this air of unrequited longing about them.

It was so quiet. Just the beautiful music of the wind in the large, soft leaves. Hardly a bird, until a calling red kite made me look up and then I heard a tit and a chuckling blackbird.

I wondered if the decomposition of the conkers and their cases would feed the trees. I wondered who had planted them and why. There is another trio of horse chestnuts in the next field, it was them that I visited before.

I thought that, as well as the conkers, the other food they provide (nectar for insects and leaf miner bugs for blue tits) probably also goes to waste. They are too far away. If they spray the crops, especially.

As I sat there, thinking, I tried to tune into the tree, the one with the huge conkers. I said that I was confused about, well, everything. Sure, I love sitting with trees, attending to the world, but, well, what's the point.

"This is the point," said the tree.

"But what good does it do?"

"The good is in creating a connection. Reweaving yourself into the web."

"That might be nice for me, but, I mean... so what?" I was being a pain, but the tree was patient.

"The connection," said the tree, "is not a thing or a moment. It is a process that is added to all the other processes of which it is always and already a part. But the more such processes of connection between divergent beings, the healthier the world. Think of me and my fungal connections. We share our world."

This didn't help me much. "But what do I give YOU?" I asked.

"A new place in shared consciousness. Don't you realise that that matters?"

I didn't; I don't. I'll have to think about it.