The felled tree: decoding the destruction

The deliberate felling of an iconic tree is a story that author Theodore Brun had heard somewhere before, prompting him to explore the reactions to it further.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles. He previously studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge, and afterwards worked in international law.

A felled decidious tree lies sprawled on the ground. The freshly sawn stump and roots are in the foreground

The stump of the felled sycamore tree.

Wandering wounder, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

News of the felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree was greeted across the country with shock, sadness and disgust. Shock at the wanton vandalism; sadness at the loss of an iconic feature of our British Isles; disgust at the kind of nihilism it must have taken in the mind of whoever did the deed. Predictably social media blew up. I blew up with it. This was ‘our’ tree - held which such affection by those of us who knew it across the nation as to be almost sacred. The spiteful disregard for that affection felt truly shocking.

The most natural reaction to this is anger. “Throw the book at whoever did it!’ was the general feeling - whether it was the 16-year-old boy first arrested or the 60-year-old man detained later. No motive could justify such a mindless act.

But then came the double shock for me. A jarring recollection that it was the story of the felling of another great tree that had been the seed of inspiration from which grew my entire historical fiction series, The Wanderer Chronicles. And in that story, the man doing the felling seemed to me something of a hero. The tree in question was a mighty oak, dedicated to Donar (better known as Thor) the god of thunder, which once stood in the province of Hesse in central Germany. In the early 8th century, an English missionary, known to history as St Boniface, took an axe to Donar’s Oak, a sacred place of worship to the local pagan inhabitants, even as a large crowd of them stood by raining curses on his head. Boniface would have justified his act of vandalism on religious grounds: the tree was the site of horrific human sacrifice and rituals of witchcraft, and must be destroyed, in part to prove the impotence of this pagan god.

Shocking as his act must have been, Boniface’s aim was not to offend. It was to overthrow. To overthrow a system of religious and spiritual oppression. A system of cruelty, death and bondage. In a sense, it was an act of expulsion of false gods who demanded everything and promised nothing in return. That would have been his justification, at least. And in its place, he intended to plant a new culture of faith, freedom and forgiveness; of truth and love. It’s telling that he used the timber from the fallen oak to build a church.

The event marked the beginning of the widespread destruction of many sacred groves and other places of pagan worship in the decades that followed, symbolic of the supplanting of one pre-existing culture by another, more powerful culture on the rise.

So, can Boniface’s good intentions be distinguished from the apparently nihilistic felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree in our own day? I think they can. But no doubt many would disagree.

After all, these days, we find the idea of one culture asserting itself over another almost as abhorrent as the human sacrifice Boniface was trying to suppress. Certainly, to post-modern sensibilities and values, religious motivations no longer justify any kind of cultural vandalism. Few would have much sympathy for the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. Nor for the deliberate arson attacks in the mid-nineties on over fifty churches in Norway by neo-pagan Black Metal bands. Even today, the demolition of a Palestinian mosque by Israeli shells as an act of retaliation attracts media opprobrium, no matter the human death toll that provoked it.

So, is there any good for which vandalism may be justified?

In a world and culture that feel ever more divided, perhaps the Sycamore Gap Tree, even in its destruction, can give us some hope, some fleeting moment of cultural unity.

The protest actions of environmental groups like Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion fall into that vein, and strongly divide opinion. They proclaim a new gospel of environmentalism. Turn around, mend your ways, and be saved. (Although is it really just an old message of paganism: Appease the gods of sun and thunder or else face oblivion?) In any case, it’s a message burning with no less zeal than did old Boniface’s. And while they may not agree with their methods, many would at least agree with their cause and motive. The question is: how far can you stretch a point?

The fact is that there is much that we do not agree on. Borders, taxation, healthcare, education, marriage, sex and gender, even what constitutes a human life. Cultural divisions seem to grow only wider. Increasing mistrust has us standing in opposition to one another - vitriol and disdain filling the space between us. Two tribes in a stand-off. Rather like the two hills that form the gap where that beautiful tree stood until last week. The gap is empty now. The tree is what brought them together. The tree was what completed the whole scene. Without it, we see only the empty air between the two opposing hills.

In a world and culture that feel ever more divided, perhaps the Sycamore Gap Tree, even in its destruction, can give us some hope, some fleeting moment of cultural unity. Trees still represent to us an essential good. Their existence transcends the passage of our short lives. They stand through storm or shine. They sink their roots deep into the good earth. They stretch their limbs up to the skies. They are a metaphor for a life well lived.

The felling of this iconic and beautiful tree is a pang we can all feel, the more so because it seems to have been done as a naked act of vandalism with - so far - no justification offered. Maybe this then is its greatest legacy: that, rather than reaching for the easy emotions of anger and blame, we can transcend our differences for just a moment. And allow ourselves to be reminded that, more than we ever realised, we loved that old tree. And we shall miss it now it’s gone.

If we can all feel that, perhaps there’s hope for us yet.

The Sycamore Gap Tree as was.

A black and white photo show a single mature tree silhouetted in the gap between two hills..

Review

Books

Culture

Joy

Poetry

22 March 2024

5 min read

Theresa Lola's poetical hope

The death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A poet stands and speaks, raising an arm.

Theresa Lola performs at Kings Place.

Cosmic Shambles Network.

There are poems such as T.S. Eliot's ‘Journey of the Magi’ and U.A. Fanthorpe's ‘BC – AD’ which have become staples of Christmas Carol services. Last Christmas, for the first time, I used Theresa Lola's ‘Look at the Revival’ as the poem in our Carol Service that explored the experience of the Magi in seeking and finding Jesus.

‘Look at the Revival’ was commissioned by National Gallery in 2020 in response to ‘The Adoration of Kings’ painting by Jan Gossaert. The poem is written in the voice of Balthazar, the Black King in the painting, and explores the painting’s themes of rupture, transformation and renewal. It ends with this reflection:

My job often feels like a hefty stone

But today I am powered by a fierce awe.

I say to the stunned people let us look deeply

to know this hope deeply.

British Nigerian poet and former Young People’s Laureate for London, Lola is the British equivalent of Amanda Gorman, whose poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ made such an impact at US President Joe Biden's inauguration. Lola said after that event that “To have poetry make national headlines … was just so exciting” and to have Gorman’s poem articulate everyone’s feelings “was just the perfect example of what poetry can do”.

There is a real art to writing poetry for public occasions where depth and immediacy need to intertwine. It is an art that Lola herself has mastered, as was demonstrated when she was commissioned by the Mayor of London’s Office to write and read a poem - ‘For Those Who Listen When Courage Calls’ - at the unveiling of Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.

Lola was joint-winner in 2018 of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and was featured in the 2019 ‘Forces for Change’ issue of British Vogue as a next generation talent. Other commissions for her work, which explores themes of self-discovery, transformation, cultural heritage, and belonging, have included Selfridges, Rimowa, Royal Festival Hall, and Audible. She is currently leading the Volunteer Interpreter Programme at Dulwich Picture Gallery where, in a programme inspired by their Soulscapes exhibition, she is exploring how poetry can be used to interpret their collection.

“This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”

S. Niroshini

Her debut poetry collection ‘In Search of Equilibrium’, which was hailed as “powerful and rigorous”, is an extraordinary, and exacting study of death and grieving. The reviews of this collection have much to say about the well springs of her work.

In this collection, as S. Niroshini writes, she “deftly deploys form, texture, and shape to interrogate the meaning of death and the suffering of family” with poems “variously presented as computer coding, live reportage, prayers, algorithms, Wikipedia entries and hip-hop lyrics”. While its subject matter is, as Carmina Masoliver notes, “essentially natural – life and death”, the poems themselves are often experimental and “bring in cultural elements … as well as religious allusions”. Charlie Hill explains that “This superb debut collection revolves around the death of the poet’s grandfather, whose Alzheimer’s resulted in a ‘four-year funeral’”. Laurie Smith suggests “It is rare for a debut collection by a young poet to be so death-haunted, but it is death-haunted in the same sense as [Sylvia] Plath’s ‘Ariel’ and [Anne] Sexton’s ‘To Bedlam and Part Way Back’.” He writes that “The comparison isn’t fanciful” as “Lola’s writing has a similar vividness and strength”.

Masoliver notes that “The collection is book-ended with Lola’s own prayer and psalm”. “From the first,” she suggests, “there is an expression of doubt about the poet’s faith, though holding onto it ‘even when I fear God might be a thin shadow’”. Yet, “By the time we get to the final poem, there is a loss of innocence to the reality of the world around us, but a certain strength that comes with ‘fighting darkness’”. Niroshini states that “This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”.

Lola has said that “The writing of the collection was emotionally challenging as the poems touch on sensitive topics about death, faith, family and mental health.” For her, “writing poetry has been a ‘therapeutic tool’, a ‘healthy listening ear’ and a way to express her struggles, be they anxiety or … grief”. Nevertheless, she also says: “My poems always suggest and show hope no matter how gritty the subject is! I do write poems that are centred around my faith, and that hope in my faith is Jesus”.

Many reviewers note Lola’s ability to write lines, such as ‘sweeping me off my bones’, “that stop you dead”. Hannah Williams was particularly moved by lines from ‘Blessed Are the Mothers of a Dead Child’:

Blessed are the mothers of a dead child

for they manage to recover

after eating the fruit that grows

from planting your child’s casket in the ground.

Hill cites the final lines of the same poem:

My grandmother tries to celebrate the brief beauty of his breath.

She says what use is sweeping grief under the carpet

when you can blend it to find the drop of sanity that will flow from it.

to suggest that it is here that the equilibrium sought in the collection’s title is to be found.

The Sunday Times Style Magazine has described Lola as being among “the ranks of an exciting new wave of young female bards who are widening the appeal of poetry for a new generation”. As a result, the imminent prospect of a second collection from her is a particularly exciting prospect. Look out later in the year, then, for ‘Ceremony for the Nameless’ which is described as exploring the act of naming and its role in shaping our identities, our aspirations, what we carry and how we belong. In lyrical, joyful and moving poems, Lola will explore the ways our journey through life might require us to cast off old expectations – both others’ and our own – just as at other times it can bring us back, strangely and unexpectedly, to where we first began.

This returns us to Balthazar and his journey of discovery. So, as he states: “let us look deeply / to know this hope deeply.”