In Sandy, Bedfordshire, a veteran oak tree that once stood tall has transitioned from tree to wood, planed and sandpapered by wind and rain, devoid of bark. The path to this ancient oak was reopened after lockdown, but it took months before I dared to revisit a tree I have known for most of my adult life.
During my 25 years working at the RSPB Lodge, I would meet this oak two or three times a week. Lunchbreaks often led me from the formal gardens into the woods, down earth-cut steps to greet the first and thickest of the veteran oaks. Sometimes I would pat its trunk, as big trees have that effect.
Stag-headed and on its last leaves when I first encountered it, by the turn of the millennium it was shedding sheets of beetle-drilled bark the size of dinner tables. Around 2014, when I left the RSPB, the oak’s twin trunks parted company. A measuring tape revealed they had been growing together from an ancient coppice stool through the French revolution, standing shoulder to branched shoulder in fraternité. Divided they fell, cleaving to the north and south.
I expected sadness on my return to see the oak’s continued decline, but instead I found the tree had passed into its afterlife. The base of one ruptured trunk, roots snapped off like pegs on a windthrown tent, had rebirthed as a toppled crown. The growth rings along the biggest boughs resembled the ribbed underside of a humpback whale, with an eye in the dark knot from a lost limb.
The tree’s branches had become sculpted antlers with pointed tines. The tips that once pointed to the sky, taking the talons of birds and the scrabbling feet of squirrels, now felt the caress of a human hand. The wood under my fingers felt firm and hard, good for another hundred years.
