Last month the blackberries in Wiltshire were lush. Competing with the bees, popping them into my mouth within one second of picking them. Thorns or no thorns. Chemicals or no chemicals. Forgetting to take any home. Feasting on the juicy little blobs, licking my purple fingertips, not bothered by the juice forming maroon dots on my yellow t-shirt. That was ecstasy. Big thanks to the hidden roots of the blackberry bush, the wind, insects and bees, the soil, the birds, the people who planted it, the sun, and the changing seasons.

For years we have witnessed the fullness of the ash tree behind our house thin down to a bear skeleton in the autumn. It stood naked through the winter. Come spring, it was fulsome again. We came to think of it as our friendly live green screen. It beautified the views from our windows and was home to so many birds that woke us up in the morning. Three years ago, our neighbor hacked one branch off, saying it was sick as it was dropping heavy twigs in his garden, unprovoked. Over the last few years, it’s been dwindling. No leaves old or new for the past two cycles. Now we wake up to a skeleton of a tree and an eerie silence. No birdsong. A few crows and pigeons. That’s all.

Yesterday, we watched on sadly as two tree surgeons with helmets, chainsaws, ropes and harnesses methodically chopped off one branch after another. Within a few hours all that was left of it was a neat round flat surface slightly raised from the ground, with many fine irregular concentric rings. In the space above this stump my eyes fabricate a ghost tree every time they look.

It must have risen from a dark cold earth, God knows when. In reaching toward the sun, it was majestic. It had a quiet dignity and poise. It knew how to gracefully let go of old forms of life. It balanced the perennial energies of the winter and spring within its living bark. It was a wise old teacher, hospitable towards new forms of life. Standing still, it showed me the meeting point of two journeys – the path inwards and the road outwards.

(Inspired by a passage from Eternal Echoes by John O’Donohue)