So I took the opportunity to survey the Sentinel Trees on the "other" side of the Reserve. The results: eight trees updated in my records, plus two more from last week. No changes. The ashes look surprisingly well.
And it was so good to be bathed in bright sunshine during the walk. It clouded over later, but, goodness, it makes a difference to the photographs.
I made one of my relaxation videos, using some photos and some images of the flooded woodland.
Briefly, I sat with an Oak who lives close to an Ash on a closed footpath. The Ash has extended a branch into the crown of the Oak and the Oak leans away to seek the light. They are an interesting pair.
The Oak suggested his name was Chronos and I was a little shocked as I had been swept up by seeing kairotic time as so much "better" than chronological time. The tree reminded me to be wary of these polarities. And that life and seasons do both progress sequentially. That this way of experiencing time is certainly relevant and may offer treasures that I currently do not appreciate.
I was grateful for the wisdom.
[S]hortly after his assertion that trees can teach him nothing, Socrates allows himself to be goaded into making an impromptu speech by an oath that Phaedrus swears upon the spirit of the very tree beneath which they sit! Trees, it would seem, still retain a modicum of efficacious power. Later in the dialogue Socrates himself will remind Phaedrus that, according to tradition, “the first prophetic utterances came from an oak tree. – The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, David Abram
In the Reserve, I watched wrens and squirrels, the pigeons flocking - and I thought of passenger pigeons. A flock a mile wide that takes three days to fly over. I thought of all the birds landing and branches breaking. I thought of the rich guano after they'd left. I thought of their vital role and their extinction.
Lyle Lewis says even without hunting they'd have gone extinct through habitat loss - and even if all humans did was take chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease to America, they'd still have gone extinct.
Comments