WHAT I TREASURE

My favourite tree By Ema Lou Rowe

The mud is solid as I totter up the uneven track, reminiscent of my first steps in high heels. This is a familiar walk, one I’ve trodden for 16 years since we moved to Exmoor. Alone, with the kids when they were toddlers (now teens), with friends and, many times, with my faithful old dog, Maisie.

As I make my daily pilgrimage, my thoughts batter into one another. I pass through the ‘boat field’ and recall foraging from the hazel and hawthorn hedges. The ‘boats’ – large slate rocks – have seen many a play pirate battle. Blackthorns wave in the breeze and another thought occurs: ‘Must turn the sloe gin bottles.’ Sometimes my thoughts almost blind me, so that I reach my tree without realising how I’ve arrived there. Those are the bad days, when one foot in front of another is enough.

A slight bend to the right and there it is, my clever old oak. Clever, because for 50-odd years she has grown on a 45-degree-angle slope and I know she’s at least 50 because decent acorn crops begin when oaks are that age – every year, she drops them at my feet. Her girth is wider than a hug and she’s tall enough to look down on the village below.

She’s my arboreal companion and keeper of secrets. I go through an internal ritual of asking if it’s okay to stand with her, taking three deep breaths and feeling my feet root deep into the earth while my head lifts towards the sky.

In this moment, I am here, with my tree. Alive. I smile, alert, out of the internal conversations and vitally, physically present.

As I walk back, whatever time of year it is, I start to see things I haven’t noticed before: the finches popping in and out of the hazel, frogspawn in a puddle, or the tiny verdant shoots that will be topped with indigo bells.

And this is when my tree magic happens, the creative charm for Wild Wellies, my forest school. I imagine how larch cones could become mice for mini mice picnics, or the bramble gathered to make wreath frames for spiders’ webs, or how we could grow seedlings in walnut shells to create mini chinampa, Mexican-style floating gardens… all ways to help the children see that nothing is permanent, all is in constant change.

I’m back at the top of the track again after stopping to look at the view. The bite of the cold air moves me on. Back down the tracks, I’m the same person I was an hour ago, but oh so different. Calmer, brighter and full of ideas, and I know it’s down to nothing special, just a walk to my tree – and back. What means a lot to you? Tell us in 500 words; thesimplethings@icebergpress.co.uk.