Microcosmic

After a couple of weeks of setting off on my patch walks in the dark – often getting back in the dark, often in the rain and not bothering to remove my lens cap, this morning was all the more welcome. A beautiful, bright, crisp morning – a classic! It’s a good job no one was in earshot as every few steps I’d let out a ‘wow!’ or an ‘oh!’. Then when I got to the top of the ridge and saw one of the best ‘sea of mist’ effects ever – a “no way!”. Top marks to the sun, sky, mist, trees...in fact nature, for a great show this morning - Classic Patch!

On my walks around the old golf course, on my patch, I always pay my respects to my favourite tree – probably in the world. I doff a mental cap to the Lightning Tree. I honour its plucky underdog-edness, its tenacity, its will to live. With innards hollowed out so that only a shell of oak remains, it was almost certainly struck by lightning. When lightning hits a tree it can have a variety of effects, some get off lightly – but not this one. The strike may well have raised the core temperature so much that the sap boiled, some trees explode, this one is burnt out. I can stand inside and survey the damage. What are now the walls of this trunk cubicle are charred to black, with a texture like the skin of a dark snake, greened in places by algae. I can look up and see the sky through a portal of burnt wood. I’m standing in the place heartwood should be – the place that fire has voided. This winter’s morning it looks to be in a sorry state. The lightning tree appears to be on i...