Letters from the Land

I am here

In the car, driving from here to there, weighed down with feelings I’m not sure where to put, I notice as I drive the country lanes I am talking to the trees as I pass by. Not with my words out loud, but defined, sincere acknowledgements from my heart. “I know, I know” I send to the beech on the left. Hedges of hawthorn and brambles and others I drive by too fast to name or notice and go back to my thoughts, and then to a big oak “I will, I am coming”. On and on I go, the older of the tall trees with their broader trunks and stronger branches like friends trying to catch my eye in a moving crowd. And I noticed that in a world where I go about apologising profusely for everything, I was not apologising to these trees for being late, for not having the time to stop, for being busy, and leaving it so long…because, because as I drove I wasn’t wracked with the guilt of an unmet to-do list, or bracing for disappointing someone I couldn’t attend to just yet.  I was infused with the most pleasant feeling of calm grounded understanding and acceptance. All throughout my being - meat and bone, soul and spirit - I felt the voice of the trees: “I am here”. No judgement, no demands, no expectations of me at all, just a reassurance: “I am here”.

Though I had never got out just there on that stretch of road to meet that particular rowan or birch that spoke to me, there is a shape and feel that comes from oak, pine, gorse, heather, beech, holly and fern that feels familiar. Like friends waiting for me, whenever I can make it, they’ll be there just on down the road today, on the moors next week, another forest, another time. And when I do stop, and they know I will, because I always have, they’ll be there. It’s as if the individual trees join together through the forest and woodland, the roadsides and gardens and speak as one. And I can hear, always have done since I could remember: finding comfort in the thick rhododendrons at the bottom of my Granny’s garden, squeezing in between the fir trees in my step-fathers hedge, making dens in the hazels on the other side of the lake, afternoon snoozes in the mossy oaks of Wistman’s Woods. It seeps through my skin, in my lungs, through my eyes, and I hear it: ‘I am here”.

Pure, uncomplicated by misinterpretation of human stumblings, abundant, breathe it in, feel it under my feet, hear it through the branches, see it sway above my head against the blue sky, the voice of unconditional love. There are stories in the stones, messages of love blossoming on the trees, letters from the land, if we listen...