Favourite trees are source of inspiration and comfort

Rab gets a warm feeling from renewing his acquaintance with some arboreal buddies from days gone by

I’ve been saying hello to the trees again. I don’t actually say it out loud; I just hold them by a branch or leaf and wish them well. These trees, oddly enough, are back in the city, in the forest below the suburban hill, where once I was wont to waddle. There are plenty of trees in the back garden of my new house (it’s really a tiny section of wood rather than a garden), but I haven’t communed properly with them yet.

I’m getting to know the garden birds, though, and the place is positively resounding with song.

A couple have been killed by evil getting into the garden – probably not a snake, as happened in that Eden; more likely a cat or hawk – so I’m having to move the feeder to safer spots. No escaping the horrible nature of nature, so to speak, but we do the best we can.

It was lovely to be back on my old stomping ground, waddling aboot in my favourite places, and saying hello to my three favourite trees (there used to be four but one was diseased and had to be taken down).

One of the remaining trees is also distinctly wabbit-looking and, when I was ill for a bit (never missed a column, though!), for mental solace I took my mind from the hospital bed to the little patch of wood where it stands.

When I see it now, I tell it: “We’re in this together, buddy.”

This is going to sound strange, but I’m going to say it anyway. When I placed my palm on the trunk of the tree on this visit, I swear a feeling of warmth ran up my forearm.

I experienced something similar many years ago with a whale bone at Orphir, in Orkney. Just one of those things, I guess.

One of my other favourite trees stands rooted in rocks on a cliff face. Its fortitude is inspiring.

And another one positively shivers with pleasure at my approach. My seat in the woods is on a log, part of a dead tree. I guess it’s like sitting on a big bone from a skeleton.

Sometimes, I find our affection for trees peculiar, and I’m aware that anthropomorphism is probably dopey. All the same, you get a feeling of protection under trees. They put you in their place. They remind you that you’re not the only species on the planet.

Some bestselling books recently have claimed that, while trees clearly don’t think like we do, they do communicate with each other (“Here’s Rab again. Expect he’s going to pat one of us on the trunk, the wee eejit that he is.”)

And trees are always there, solid and reliable, until disease or development takes them. I say solid, but I’ve a couple of bamboo trees (or bushes) in my new garden, and I really love the way they bend in the breeze.

They’re supposed to be the inspiration for Chinese martial arts, which point out that brittle bodies snap but supple ones absorb force and bounce back.

I can speak authoritatively about this as I have a black belt in origami.

I shall belt up about trees for now. But I’ll be back to visit my arboreal buddies next time I visit the city.