In a year of overwhelming tragedy, including the murderous Hamas attacks of 7th October and, some say, Israel’s disproportionate response and fascist Russia’s war against Ukraine, how strange that one of the main things we mourned last year was a tree. Not just any old tree. But the killing of the Sycamore Gap tree, a single sycamore tree which stood in a dip by Hadrian’s Wall, upset many of us, including me, much more than perhaps it should have done.
Perhaps it was the symbolism of the tree which was planted in the late 1880s and became the site of numerous marriage proposals and ashes scatterings that affected us most? We thought about those with memories, some happy, some unbearably sad and what the senseless destruction of the tree would mean to them. I have heard people say, “It was only a tree”, but that’s as stupid as referring to someone who has just died by saying “it was only a human being”. Sure, there are differences between an old tree and a much-loved relative or friend but it was still a living, breathing thing. Until someone cut it down.
Haven’t we all done crazy, brainless things in our lives? Let he who is without sin etc etc. But that isn’t an excuse. If the person or persons who cut it down didn’t know the significance of the tree, or its history, and didn’t stop to think what they were doing to a glorious part of nature and indeed our history, I can’t excuse their actions. Increasingly, as I begin to appreciate the sheer wonders of our world, I am more attracted to nature in general and trees in particular.
Sure the actions of the terrorist maniacs of Hamas, the reckless response of Israel’s far right leadership and the sheer evil of Vladimir Putin are proportionately worse than a felling of a mere tree, but I think it speaks volumes for us as human beings that we are so affected by the death of the Sycamore Gap tree in the way we have been.
The destruction of our countryside, the paving over of fields and the wiping out of wildlife is happening apace in our country – come and see what’s happening in South Gloucestershire where I live if you don’t believe me – horrifies me and maybe that’s another act of symbolism that’s represented by that famous tree. I haven’t forgotten what’s happening everywhere else in the world – far from it – but I am glad, if that’s the right word, that I’m still upset by the killing of a tree. In this fucked up world, it’s good to have feelings at all.
