Nature's destruction

 My office is upstairs, facing east. It is where I continue a low level of work for the company I have supported for twenty years; it is where I have written all the cosmology papers I have had published, and where I write my short stories or poetry. In winter, the sun rises far to the south, before slinking off close to the horizon. Gradually sunrise moves round until it hides for a while behind our neighbour's house before peering over the roof, then continues its move northwards to rise behind a mature lime tree, flecking my room with its leafy shadows imprint of shadows before finally reaching the wide horizon of the distant hill. 

Lime trees can reach a height of 150 feet, the tallest broadleaf British tree, and live for 500 years; this tree was old, and well over 100 feet in height, and Ann and I loved looking out on it. It was the last of a row of trees dividing our properties, shelters for a variety of birds, and home to bat colonies which teamed out at dusk to brighten the fading sky. All these trees were butchered one year when we were on holiday, leaving a blank view of the house next door; only the lime tree remained. Coming back this morning, we were met by our neighbour, Lynda, who boasted that the tree was coming down. The sin the tree had committed to invite this destruction? It shed some of its leaves in Lynda's garden and she couldn't be bothered to sweep them up! Ann was too tearful to stay and ran inside, and I turned without comment to follow her. Lynda's feeble cry as we walked in, "Oh, I've upset Ann." The woman has no idea how valuable that tree was; the last of a great number of limes, from which one of the houses down the hill was named. To look at the constant activity of the birds it supported was a mark of continuing life; its form broke up the distant skyline; and the passage of the sun past and through it marked the seasons. Ann and I both love trees; I used to lean my cheek against some huge, rough oak and stroke the contours of its rough bark, watching the acorns form, ripen and fall. My father admired the different woods, working their grain with affection and understanding. He would not allow us to put shoes on a wooden table, and believed in touching wood for luck, sensing the spirit of life they represent. Even the bat colonies had returned finally to this remaining tree.

Destruction

We have a large sycamore to the side of our house. It needs regular pruning, and its leaves fall on the side garden, the drive and over the fence into the back. Each year I sweep them up, and find it therapeutic to be able to do some light gardening and see a direct benefit by way of a clear drive and lawn, unlike most gardening which is backbreaking and often seems to give little reward. In addition, birds mess the cars from its boughs, but we would not dream of cutting it down to save a little work.

Somehow, the loss of this last tree, over one hundred feet high and probably two hundred years old, home to bats and squadrons of  insects and birds, represents something deeper: the loss of life and continuity, the end of an era. So many people round Hundon have destroyed their trees; it is a sad village for encouraging such destruction when the whole world is crying out for reconstitution of the natural order.

POSTSCRIPT: Edwin and Andre left for a three-week holiday in Brazil to stay with Andre's family, leaving their empty house for us to spend the day away from the sight and noise of the broken landscape. We returned in the evening and another neighbour tapped on the door. She came specifically to see Ann as Lynda had met her and said how upset Ann seemed and  she was upset too as the tree blocked her view of the row of houses beyond it. The upshot of the disagreement was that Lynda was named a bovine beast, so they comforted each other in the grief Lynda had caused, inspired by the cherry tree which, in Japan, symbolizes new beginnings and good fortune; life-affirming ideas that embody a positive and resilient nature.