The rain has continued, making a free format approach to daily blog posts on doing something wild for nature more of a challenge. In theory, I did work with soil again but perhaps weeding in gravel and between paving slabs doesn’t really count. It certainly doesn’t sound very connecting to nature like – I got wet hair for the cause too 😉
In blog planning terms, I could be sitting with ideas ready for a rainy day blog but that’s not the way I wanted to roll with this. It had to be something I felt on the day. It took an evening drive just before dark and today’s connection to nature came to me – trees, great big deciduous mature ones sitting like living statues in the middle of fields.
This connection goes way back to being a teenager and sitting in a particular field drawing a particular deciduous tree. I’m sure I sketched it many times through the seasons. I can remember vividly being in awe of the beauty and character of this tree – an oak I believe it was.
Appreciating this tree’s great value of food, shelter and homes to a huge diversity of wildlife species never occurred to me at the time. I simply loved the form of this tree, the shaping of its branches and its scale. I would lose hours sitting recording it in my sketchbook in my own amateur way. I felt a very real connection at the time too. I guess now, this was my first true connection to the natural world.
Sketchbook now long gone, perhaps the tree has too, it was a photo search tonight for an image to support how the form of a mature tree captured me in my teenage years and still does to this day. I knew exactly what image I’d choose.
Taken back in February 2009 on a woodland walk at Cambo (to see their fantastic celebration of snowdrops) the roots in the tree above absolutely captivated me. You can easily see why. Perhaps I should try sketching this 🙂
Taking a good guess, I can’t be the only one who has a connection to a tree when they were growing up. I can’t be the only one in awe of what age brings to a tree either. It would be great if you could share your tree stories in a comment 🙂
This post was published by Shirley for shirls gardenwatch in June 2016.
That is a beautiful tree root system. I'm not surprised it inspired you. It looks on first glance like bodies entwined.
Hello Stella, how nice to see you stop by. Thanks for your comment 🙂
Sorry I’ve missed replying here. It’s been hard to keep up just now – this is not my usual pace of posting. I agree with you completely on the first glance of root system. It really didn’t look real – the photo doesn’t convey its scale 🙂