Loss and Renewal In The Woods

As Autumn arrives and the leaves begin to turn, I look forward to the colour of the dying leaves. Beech trees have been one of my life long loves. As a small child I was lucky enough to have a teacher who would walk with us from our small village school room up into the beech woodland behind. We would sit amongst the trees and draw the bluebells in the Spring time, nestled at the foot of the South Downs in Sussex.

 Some 30 years later I was living in Spain. We lived in La Garrotxa, Catalonia, a beautiful location of volcanic rock and evergreen oak. I wanted to run Nature Connection workshops and I was struggling to connect deeply enough with the land and the trees. I made a pilgrimage to Fageda d'en Jorda, a wonderful forest of beech trees. I breathed in the scent; I wandered and marvelled and played. I felt at home.

So it is with great sadness that I noticed one of the grandmother beech trees in our woodland looking sick. Her leaves and branches were dying at the top, where she towered above the other trees. Our friendly tree surgeon confirmed my fears, her trunk was rotten and she would need to be felled. She towers above the road and could be dangerous if she fell in her own time. 

It will cost us £2000 and many tears to fell her. We will sing and dance and give thanks for her life. Hopefully we can carve something small from one of her branches.
The joy in being co guardian of the woodland is to see the young yew and her younger sister, another fine Beech, and the Birch and the Oak and the Hazel, all jostling for more space and more light, striving towards life even with the thought of her passing.