When I read that those pricks who chopped down the Sycamore Gap tree for four years and three months, my first thought was: that was a bit harsh. Experienced tree surgeons Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers may have done something utterly moronic and, for many, something desperately upsetting, but hell, it was only a tree, right? Planted in the 1880s, it was an iconic tree, a landmark of Northumberland and “symbol of the untamed beauty” of the landscape around Hadrian’s Wall, as Judge Lambert put it when she sent them down. Anyway, Adam had said he was pissed, so that was all right then.
People have avoided prison for much less, but the more I read about their callous and deliberate act, the more I felt that actually the prosecution should appeal the sentence and ask for it to be doubled.
The surviving Hairy Biker Si King affected my feelings by the effects the tree’s ‘murder”, as he put it, had on him. It’s a deeply moving read. But what makes people travel a fair distance to do something so very wrong? What could these two dickheads possibly get out of it?
Adam’s brief said his client would carry the burden of regret for his “stupid act” as a “personal penance” for the rest of his life. Daniel had had the inevitable multiple struggles and mental health problems because that’s what us mental people do every time we have an episode. We all travel a long distance, having planned meticulously to cut down a famous tree for no obvious reason. No wonder mental health has a stigma hanging over it. People think we’re mad and when they read things like this and who can blame them?
Daniel lives in a caravan and his brief said people had attacked it, as well as sending him hate mail. I don’t think that helps much, either. I understand it, I suppose, but from my own point of view I only have so much emotion to go around these days and I try not to waste it hating people.
The tree at Sycamore Gap is on my lengthy bucket list of places to visit before I die (it would be pointless leaving it until after). Now the tree is no longer there, I fear I’d find the whole thing depressing rather than uplifting, as Si King explained so well.
It certainly seems that I’m not the only person who gets upset about apparently trivial matters, sometimes more than I do about major tragedies. And I suppose I am happy that I do. It was such a beautiful tree but now it’s a dead stump, cut down pointlessly by two goons with too much time on their hands and insufficient brains to utilise it.
Most people aren’t like Daniel and Adam. Most people are good people who do good things. And when bad people do bad things, they give us all a bad name. I hope when they’ve done their porridge they’ll live better lives and aim to do good things instead of pathetic destruction. At times like this, hope is all we can cling to.
