Tuesday 16 August 2011

The Mighty Oak


OK, first of all, let me say that if I knew how to change the colour of your names in the comments, and the descriptions under each of my links, I would. I can change every other colour - all of my colour scheme is considered and deliberate, apart from that shocking cyan which sends me into a dyslexic fit of flashing unreadability. So sorry about that.

I had half a mind to do a post about oak trees at some point in the future. I was going to wait until I had some relevant things to say about them, but they keep cropping up, so I suppose that'll be now.

I met two beautiful ladies today. I won't say too much here, but one of them, who shares a name with a certain Celtic Goddess I know, is someone I've seen around my local area and thought 'I'd like to know you'. Well, as fate would have it, now I do. The other had a tattoo on her arm of an oak tree. I couldn't take my eyes off it. The main reason I've never considered having a tattoo (despite going through a teenage phase of tattoo-obsession, buying tattoo magazines, learning all the terminology and symbolism etc) was that there was nothing I could be sure of identifying with forever. But, looking at this oak tattoo, it seemed so right. How can one go off oak trees? It doesn't seem possible.

Maybe it's because I was born under the sign of the Oak (Duir), according to the Celtic Tree Calendar, or maybe it's because one of my favourite campsites as a child had a solitary oak right in the middle of the field that we tent-and-van oddballs were assigned to, but the oak, to me, is the perfect tree. I love all trees, particularly native English ones, and the trees I would choose for my home would be rowan and willow or birch, but the oak is king.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking in unknown countryside in Somerset (probably known to someone, but not previously to me). I saw an oak at the edge of the field, and I said, 'I have to go there'. So I did, and as I held my hand to its trunk, and looked up into the canopy, I spoke to the spirit of the tree. And what surprised me was that it wasn't a She or a He or an It who answered. It was a They - I was talking to a city. A huge city. A metropolis of activity and life and character and energy. And when I pulled away, They laughed at this little human who thought she could hold a conversation with an Oak City in just five minutes!

I'm not going to rush out to the nearest tattoo parlour. But I am going to do something about framing a painting that's been sitting in my to-do pile for too long. Shown above, this is a print of a painting by Lucy Tyler who, unfortunately, doesn't have a website, but can occasionally be found in odd corners of Kent!

3 comments:

  1. Have you read 'The Keys of the Trees' by Alison Uttley? That was one of my favourite stories when I was a child, not least because the oak was the wisest and stateliest, which felt quite right to me. It is the best tree.

    By the way, the names on comment threads look green to me, not cyan.

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  2. I haven't read that, but I'll look out for it!

    Yes, I forgot to mention, but I figured out how to change the colour. It was just under some obscure heading I hadn't thought of!

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