version

Well-known member
"A tree is a wondrous thing that shelters, feeds, and protects all living things. It even offers shade to the axmen who destroy it.”

“We’ve learned a little about a few of them, in isolation. But nothing is less isolated or more social than a tree.”

“For there is hope of a tree, if it goes down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender branches will not cease. Though the root grows old in the earth, and the stock dies in the ground, at the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs. But man, man wastes away and dies and gives up the ghost, and where is he?”
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version

Well-known member
"In a Country Once Forested", by Wendell Berry

The young woodland

remembers the old, a dreamer

dreaming

of an old holy book,

an old set of instructions,

and the soil under the grass

is dreaming of a young forest,

and under the pavement the

soil is dreaming of grass.
 

version

Well-known member
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
 

version

Well-known member
"Consider," replies the Geomancer, "-Adam and Eve ate fruit from a Tree, and were enlighten'd. The Buddha sat beneath a Tree, and he was enlighten'd. Newton, also sitting beneath a Tree, was hit by a falling apple,- and he was enlighten'd. A quick overview would suggest that Trees produce Enlightenment. Trees are not the Problem. The Forest is not an Agent of Darkness.
 

version

Well-known member
I'm curious as to where Cameron's going to go with the sequels. He created a pretty incredible world with the first one.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I was talking to one of my friends here about the blocked off area in our town (see other thread) and he was googling to see if he could find out if the reason for it was online anywhere, he didn't find out anything about that but did discover that our town has the oldest tree (or maybe just oldest olive tree - seems to depend where it's reported) in Portugal apparently. Seems it's believed to be two thousand eight hundred and fifty years old! That's pretty insane isn't it?


I know exactly where that is - right near Dominos Pizza in fact - and there is no sign or fence or anything so I had no idea about it at all. It was there almost eight hundred years before the birth of Christ... I reckon they ought to protect it. Then again there is a castle nearby which is almost 700 years old and they converted it into a bar with big ugly signs stuck all over it and a public toilet in the keep so I shouldn't be surprised I guess.
Anyway, when we're free again might go and eat pizza under its shade...
 
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catalog

Well-known member
You've enough material to create a good zine now rich, about your area. PDF at the moment obvs, cos there's no zine fairs
 

catalog

Well-known member
But rich could make his graffiti tour and this old tree, and the wasteground tour, into a nice little psychogeographical pamphlet
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Trees & mythology, trees as safe space archetypes in therapy, trees as climbing frames for kids.

I’ve never hugged one, but I rarely feel as relaxed while walking in woodlands. The lack of vistas hones your sensory focus input range right in, dappled sunlight, the sound your movement makes, being watched by a myriad of other consciousnesses. Rest points are demarcated by certain trees, an oak on a ridged escarpment that offers views & shelter, yews in church grounds to have your lunch under in the summer. Some of Britain”s ancient yews are well worth trying to engineer a day out to, spellbinding entities & locations.

Grew up surrounded by beechwood. One of the immediate post-lockdown plots is to revisit them asap. Old friends indeed.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Thing is that that blocked off bit of town is the only thing that has happened in Santa Iria since that tree was planted... I'm not sure there is enough going on here to sustain a zine. As an aside Saint Iria was a really lame and boring saint who didn't have sex with two people and then one of them killed her out of jealousy, that's it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
My girlfriend looked on Google Street View and couldn't see the oldest tree - we had this awful feeling that it had been chopped down for firewood or to move the roundabout 2cm to the left or something so we decided to go and have a look.
Anyway, luckily had the bearings slightly wrong and it is still there... in fact it's basically in someone's garden but seems she didn't mind us looking at it and taking a few pics etc. It does have a plaque of sorts now (albeit worn to fuck) and it's kind of divided down the middle of the trunk to effectively become two trees. Anyway, here is an up to date pic with some suspicious looking guy lurking in the background.

OldestTree.jpg
 
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