Treescape of the mind...

I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.

James Russell Lowell

(1819-1891)

I've been thinking about trees.

At the moment those I encounter are mostly stripped bare and displaying their shapely branches and beautiful bark against wintery skies. I love to see them like this, although I admit I'm already starting to look closely for the first leaf buds of the Spring. I enjoy the wintery starkness but at this late stage of the season, with the beauty of the snow now gone, I am ready for winter to be over. The trees I pass on a daily basis are such a tangible sign of the seasons coming and going and I love that about them. Living in the inner city I treasure the few trees I encounter for their being not as plentiful.

When I was a very little girl I loved The Faraway Tree books and I'm sure those stories fueled two of my grownup loves - travel and trees. I was thrilled by the idea of a huge tree that housed magical characters and had fantastic and exotic, if not always pleasant lands that appeared on a cloud above its tallest branches. I'm always inclined to climb trees and secretly, I think I still hope that one day I'll stumble across a tree like this. It's no secret that on the wishlist for my dream home, large trees feature prominently. In fact, a treehouse would be perfect.

Some of my favourite places to curl up, especially with a book, have been in or under trees: the willow tree in the garden of my earliest childhood, an old oak tree on campus, the stone pines on the wine estate where my mother lived for a while, milkwood trees at the beach, a eucalyptus grove on the edge of a picnicker's lake, a copper beech in a Parisian park... I think trees and I were made for each other because with my Celtic colouring - ginger hair and pale, freckly skin, which goes quickly and horribly red and crispy in the sun - I always seek (and always have) the shady spot.

I also used to have a recurring dream in my youth about a tree that was hollow in the middle and had a spiral staircase, which ran up inside it. Sometimes that tree was a haven and I felt nothing but calm and peace when I went into it. Other times, I would go into the tree, start to climb the stairs and then the tree would seal itself closed with me inside. I'd start to run out of air and be paralysed and increasingly frightened - at which point I'd wake up with my face pressed into my pillow, feel like I was actually suffocating but be unable to move immediately, which was even more terrifying than the 'locked in the tree' dream which preceded it. I feel anxious now even thinking about it. But as you can tell, I never did suffocate, it's been about fifteen years since I last had that particular scary dream (although I occasionally still have the waking paralysis-fear thing), and my love of trees far outweighed any negative association that this nightmare leant them.

Last weekend I had a dream that I was in a garden. It was large and lush and full of beautiful big trees, including a solitary old yew tree. I recognised it specifically as such and also as the type of tree that I'd dreamt about as a youngster although I'd never known it to be a yew before. Isn't that odd - my dreaming self, conscious of a dreaming self? I understand that some yews in Europe, including one in Scotland and another in Wales, are amongst the oldest living things on the planet, estimated to have lived thousands of years. Yews have been considered by many throughout history as sacred and they can grow so large that some have been converted into tiny chapels. They're poisonous (with the exception of those red berries so that birds can eat them and distribute the seeds) and are often found in graveyards, symbolic of life, death and immortality. I believe they're revered in druidic culture and some ancient Celtic peoples poisoned themselves with the yew rather than surrender to Roman or Christian rule. I'm not sure if this somewhat morbid association is significant to my dream or not, I was just struck by how of all the trees in the garden, this is the one I took note of and related it to that younger dreaming self.

And then last night, when I was sorting through some old photographs in search of one I'd promised to send to a friend of us together in her garden over a year ago, I came across this one... yew berries, taken on a walk near her home on that same weekend. I had forgotten all about it.

Weird and amazing how one's mind sorts and filters and brings certain themes to the fore at certain times. I have no idea why this tree thing is specifically on my mind right now or even why I've rambled on about it here.

But there it is.