It's about an hour's walk to the Ash Tree on the Downs. Its branches are perfect for sitting and thinking. There is a kind of reciprocal quality to the thinking - like a silent dialogue and in walking a regular path over the course of the last two years the trees on this path have been the silent other to my questions. The Hawthorn first - the boundary keeper, keeper of secrets - and then Ash.
Yesterday I read Hermann Hesse’s Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte [Trees: Reflections and Poems] and was pleased he felt similar:
"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen
to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred
by particulars, the ancient law of life."
Image: insulation tape on wood.
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