(Nimue)
I'm not going to share an image of the tree, either standing or cut down, because I don't have any photos of my own. For those of you beyond the UK who have not seen the news about the pointless destruction of a much loved and iconic tree, perhaps those words are enough to give a sense of what has happened here.
I did not know the tree personally, but I have seen images. It moves me that so many people have spoken of their love for the tree, and their grief at this being's destruction.
We lose trees every day, and too many of them go unmourned and unnoticed. We've lost so many trees to the UKs failing high speed rail project. Some of them were ancient, beloved and iconic, too. We lose trees in the name of development and progress. Last year I saw saplings taken in a misguided attempt to make a place safer, as though trees are the problem and not male violence itself. We lose trees every day. Some of them beloved, some of them unremarked and uncared for.
We're also losing trees to disease, especially ash dieback. We're losing trees to climate chaos, to heavy rains that loosen roots and high winds that take trees down. I mourn those trees too, I have lost trees around my home to this.
I mourn for the trees that never were, for the ones denied a place to exist in the first place. I mourn the carparks and the former-industrial wastelands where there is so little life. I mourn the new housing estates and the relentless building of new roads. We take life out of the landscape continually. We create spaces where life cannot exist.
Humans are so quick to destroy things that don't perfectly fit into our plans. We ruin landscapes to make them a bit more convenient for us. I wish we could learn to approach the land and the living wild beings more cooperatively, seeing them as part of the world and just as entitled to be here as we are. Not as things to use or get rid of on a whim and not as necessary sacrifices to our deranged notions of progress.
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