Chapter 12, Elder. What to do, when someone's upset you so much your heart hurts?
If you fall from a roof in Haiti and break ribs, it really hurts - but sometimes can person can hurt you way more. If that happens, how can you be helped by the elder - most magic of trees?
Twelve weeks later, Nicki and I had done six meditations. Inspired by the rowan, she reached out to people she felt grateful towards; two asked to work for her. That week, she’d realised her first investor had been a bit willowy: he had been too vigorous and had promised more than he had. Nicki was now losing her partner, and fifty million – a problem. So we meditated by a yew in Wimbledon Common, where she accepted she still had fifty million promised, and her company would now have more yewy strength, if she took sole charge of it herself. It was our last meditation together since, like me, the trees had emboldened Nicki to live more cheaply. She had sold her London house and was moving to a much cheaper one in Portugal. I’d helped her, but of course she’d helped me. She’d suggested I put my meditations into a meditation app called TreeCalm, which I started to do.
**
Back home from Wimbledon, I was having a drink with my new farm friends, when I was called by none other than Leanne, the salty Manc doctor, my friend from the Night Watch. I wandered off to speak to her.
‘What I don’t get,’ she said, ‘is why Fenula told you you’d be a hypocrite , if you didn’t sail the Atlantic - then flew over herself.’
‘This is basic apple tree knowledge, Leanne: we all accuse others, of the faults we know we have in ourselves. It’s called projection. Beware what you say. You may be guilty of the crimes, of which you accuse others.’
‘What’s Fenula doing now?’
‘I don’t know Leanne. She told me not to contact her. And she blocked me on social media while we were still together.’
‘Which is not a good sign by the way! But why don’t you start a new IG account, and then see what she’s up to?’
‘Can you do that?’
‘It’s what everyone does!’
**
Ten minutes later, with a new IG moniker - @TheTreeTalks – heart beating – feeling like a snake slithering into Fenula’s psychic garden (and I really should have noticed that more) – I was feasting on her last year of posts. She’d been depressed, she revealed, since flying back from the Caribbean. (If you’d sailed, I thought, that could have been different). And that’s why, next Christmas, she was going to be running a new Women Only Eco-Retreat in Brazil, in which women would be invited to do yoga, and spot animals, and live in huts on the beach.
And suddenly, she was posting, right now, from Brazil.
The camera started on a long-legged, green insect.
‘This is a Praying Mantis,’ said Fenula, in her gorgeous Dublin accent. ‘She bites the head off her lover after sex.’
The camera panned up to her beaming face.
‘It’s one of the animals you’ll spot, if you come to our Women Only Eco-Retreat after Christmas, where you’ll get fit, and get fresh, and where all participants will be invited to plant a tree, in the retreat grounds.’
The camera panned over beach, and huts, to a gardener in a red vest, whose plump biceps twitched as he swept leaves.
‘Isn’t that right, Joao?’ she called.
‘Que?’
‘All people on the retreat will get to plant a tree - isn’t that right?’
‘Oh yes… Si!’
Creases formed in his broad manly face as he smiled. Fenula smiled back at him – an intimate, loaded moment - then turned to the camera.
‘I don’t think I’ll be biting his head off,’ she revealed, ‘well… not tonight.’
Beaming a saucy look, her face froze. Details panned up. ‘Get fit. Get fresh. Get wild.’ There would be twenty places, each costing just over two thousand pounds.
**
I felt a bit winded, as if I’d just been punched in the stomach.
Fenula, I thought, it’s not surprising you didn’t want to be associated with sailing! You’ve just flown the Atlantic again, and you’ve just invited twenty people to do that too. By my calculations that’ll make 60 tonnes of CO2, and I can’t see that Joao will be planting enough trees to offset that - and to even imply he might is greenwashing of the most monumental scale. Then I realised my main objection to it all wasn’t at Fenula’s hypocrisy, but at her rewilding, with the gardener Joao.
There’s always a moment, where a lover sees their ex has moved on – but it’s still rare that we should get to see our ex, with their new partner, giving broad hints about the sex they planned to enjoy, that very night. I saw the truth of something that Fenula had often said when we were together, which I’d refuted: I was jealous. How to cure passion? Is it best to talk to the person who’s caused it? Desperately, I needed to know.
**
We were doing our own retreat at Tolhurst that night. Just then, two musicians clambered up the wooden stairs. I recognised Freya, a tall, smiling woman, who plays the flute.
‘Are you alright Andrew?’ she asked, clumping down an amp.
‘Yes,’ I said, and hurried out.
I was like a snake in hot volcanic lava. Rarely had I felt such a visceral need to escape – to be away from people, and on cool soil, under a balm-giving tree. I walked out to the river, where the sun was setting.
But which was the right tree to sit under? I found the little copse, where a huge ash thrust up into the peach-coloured sky. I didn’t feel drawn to the ash though, but to another tree, at which I’d never sat – the elder.
**
JK Rowling, who knows a thing or two about magic – both good and bad - and how to attract it into her life, made Harry Potter’s wand out of elder – Voldemort’s too. In Danish mythology, it’s said to be sacred to Hyldemoer, who is alternately known at the mother of the elves, or as Mother Nature herself. Hippocrates, known as the father of western medicine, called it ‘my medicine chest’, since a syrup made from the elder’s tiny black berries can cure all fevers. Mythology about this tree is widespread and dramatic. Medieval Brits believed that, if you burn elder wood, you let the devil in – an example of myth following common sense, since elder wood is warty and soft and damp. The elder is the most magical of trees.
But it definitely doesn’t look it. It looks the plainest of shrubs. It usually has not one but seven or eight warty trunks, each an inch or so wide, and connected at the base but leaning away. And it doesn’t smell magic either. A catty funk seeps from elderberry blossom.
**
You can’t lean against an elder, and since it often grows in a slew of nettles, you’re unlikely to lie at it. But you’re encouraged to sit at it, if you dare. The druids called it ‘Ruis’, and believed it dealt with ‘reddening of faces’: we consult it when passion feels uncontrollably strong.
What could it do?
**
I sat cross-legged behind it. I gripped a trunk in each fist.
I breathe down and push down roots.
I felt everything draining down into the bony white roots that fingered into the brown soil but then feared. Was a warty elf about to appear?
I breathe up and breathe up peace.
Eyes shut, I leaned left, imitating the curve of the arching trunk. Almost instantly I sensed a figure, hovering in the damp rivery mist – no warty elf. It was The Mother herself. Her all-seeing eyes peered into mine.
That hurt, she said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, already feeling a lump in my throat.
But she had told you not to look, warned The Mother, gentle as dew. You must always listen.
This was making it worse. Now guilt added to the pain.
‘The trouble is,’ I whispered aloud, ‘Fenula is like a tree, still firmly planted in my heart. Can we somehow dig her out?’
Why would you do that?
‘Because our hearts are like gardens. She keeps shoving men into her heart, and yanking them out, so one day she will die alone, with a heart that’s like a wasteland of withered saplings. But she doesn’t know that. And meanwhile she is still like a huge tree in my heart, taking up all the light.’
The Mother’s eyes glittered. It was her most surprising trait – her humour.
You are so nearly right, she said – and yet so completely wrong. Your heart is not a garden. Your heart is the whole wide forest.
**
As she spoke, I didn’t just feel the truth of her words, but experienced them. Behind her, in a psychic realm, a whole wide forest opened up, filled with spreading oaks, and great beeches, whose crowns lit up in warm evening sun. I wanted to explore.
But wait, said the Mother, first you look at her. You accept everything, because in the forest, everything is allowed.
This made sense. I thought of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: if you’re scared of dogs, you’re made to see dogs, till you’re used to them. Fenula, I saw, was now my big scary dog. I faced the vast lime tree that was her presence in my psychic garden. I saw her red hair, her white shoulders, on a bed, as she peeled up Joao’s red vest.
Now you just look, urged the Mother, till you feel no feelings but her pleasure, as she does whatever she likes.
I watched. I saw her white fingers touch the sculpture of Joao’s shoulders, sensing only her relish. (And hadn’t I once stripped before her, like an escort, happy to show his wares for a kiss and a quartz necklace?) You are what you criticise.
**
As we walked off down a forest path, The Mother smiled to check on me.
Which tree do you think you want to try next? She asked.
We passed The Hazel (which, I now knew, is the tree of learning), the Pine (which soothes criticism). The forest, I saw, would offer a myriad experiences, and a myriad lessons – just as Life would offer a myriad people, who I might love, and who might love me. I saw a warty-trunked elderly shrub.
‘I feel the elder has more to teach me,’ I said to the Mother. ‘Is it true?’
It is the elder, she said. Of course!
**
So I was sitting beneath an elder, experiencing a psychic realm, in which I lay beneath another one. and was lead through a meditation that encapsulated everything I’d learned, over the last year. As it started, I felt an oak tree growing at the root of the spine, and was reminded of the key oak thought: I am oak, I am earthed, I am safe. Breathing to the second chakra, I thought of the willow, that connects us to the moon. Now consciousness rose up to the moon, and I saw a silvery filament linking back to earth - as if my spine connected all the planets. Next came Rowan, with its message, I connect for the sheer pleasure of connecting: the phrase encapsulated Mercury exactly. I realised, belatedly, that I’d been led on a journey that connected the different trees, the different chakras, and the different planets. It continued up to the planet of Uranus, planet of oddballs and inventors, such as Newton, who I’d remembered that day, as I saw an apple fall.
But what came next? I couldn’t remember. I could sense no further planet.
**
Maybe this is all nonsense, I thought. Maybe there’s no such thing as chakras, and planets that influence us. Maybe there’s nothing up in space but cold, and dark, and nothingness.
Now I sensed an old elderly voice.
Very well, she seemed to croak, connect to cold. Connect to dark. Be nothing. Be space.
Breathing in, very slowly, I connected to the vast nothingness of space.
**
Then I realised that the last planet was Pluto, and I sensed it up there in the darkness, tiny as an elderberry. From Pluto, I saw Earth, far far off in the distance, like a green elderberry, in the vastness of space – the only place we can live, so small, and so fragile – and I so longed to be back. I glided down past Uranus, Neptune, past Saturn with its rings and its moons, gliding down, till I was passing the moon, and, coming past thin cloud, I saw England, lying amongst glittering oceans.
How to return?
I felt the elder sucking me in, like a big warty straw.
**
Wow, I thought, hitting the earth with a faint bump, that was amazing! I’ve just experienced the outer edge of the solar system! If Fenula saw how to do this, she wouldn’t be flying to Brazil and making 60 tonnes of CO2! Should I show her how to do this?
People don’t change cos of what they think, croaked a warty voice, but cos of what they feel. People feel odd, so then they come up with a reason why. (The reason’s not normally right, but they don’t know). And they don’t change. No one changes - not till they learn how to feel. Want to be happy? Say nothing. Be nothing. Be like a tree. Just breathe.
**
Opening my eyes, I saw the big ash tree above me. I could hear people walking out from the Packing Shed. I remembered why. Sam Lee – the folk singer – was singing by the river, tonight, on a little stage I’d helped to decorate the day before.
I hurried over. I didn’t want to miss the start.
I arrived to see Sam Lee, sitting, calmly waiting. Sam Lee has an eldery nature, it turned out - a lovely, humble, listening quality – very unusual in a performer. He discouraged clapping. He allowed space between his songs, in which he would turn to see the moon; or the heron, which picked its way carefully on the riverbank; or an arrow of geese, that headed up the river, honkily out on manoeuvres. (Fenula should come and do a wildlife spotting retreat here, I thought. There’s certainly enough to see. But I won’t tell her that).
When Sam Lee had sung his last song, he spoke the words we’d arranged earlier.
‘Now we’re going to have a story, from Andrew Clover, one of Tolhurst’s own workers.’
He led the applause. I then stood up, and told, as much as I could remember, of this story. It went well. I finished by leading a tree meditation – for which Freya, the flute player, and a couple of musicians improvised music - which went even better. At the end, everyone clapped warmly. Several people clustered round enthusing. ‘That was amazing,’ said Freya. She told me of the Wood Festival, where she was playing – and a benefit night that was being held at Green Broom, a community in the woods. She wondered if we might reprise the meditation there.
‘Sounds great!’ I said.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked. She touched my arm with one hand. With the other she tucked her blonde hair behind an ear and looked at me expectantly.
Why is this lovely woman flirting with me? I thought. It seemed too much.
‘Thank you,’ I said to her, ‘I feel ever so tired. I am going to back to the Packing Shed, to sleep.’
**
But as I arrived, someone was clomping down the Packing Shed stairs. Outside, a starry sing-song had started. I can’t possibly sleep here, I thought. I gathered a pillow, a mat and a sleeping bag. I carried them outside where I sensed, more clearly than ever before, The Mother hovering about, in the moonlit hazel-lined lane.
Why are you avoiding that lovely woman? She asked.
‘She is too lovely,’ I thought. ‘Why would she want me?’
It is not up to you, who should want you, or why. She smiled. Accept. Let go. Let grow.
A group were murmurring up the lane. One held a glinting flute. I waited for Freya, said I was still around next week, and would enjoy having a drink then.
‘Great,’ she said, touching my arm again. ‘You have my number from the volunteers’ Whatsapp. Text me.’
**
So now I headed back to the copse. I spread out my bed, under the elder, and lay down. Looking up, through its leaves, I suddenly remembered the vow I’d made, back in the Lost City: if I ever got to tell my story, to forgo a roof, and sleep under the stars.
This is something else I wanted, I thought, that’s just come true.
I thought of the whole journey I’d been on, which I’d just summarised in a sixty minute tale, and felt that classic performer’s post-show feeling - proud, but also unsettled. I took out my phone, and did the idiot’s trail through Whatsapp, and e-mail, and Messenger. I was amazed to see Moraima had texted, sending a video of the 160 trees we’d planted. ‘I just want to thank you again,’ she said, ‘and so do the trees.’ As she panned round, I saw fresh leaves, and a young lemon. I wondered what had happened to the 840 trees, planted by the children. Had they survived?
Had my little project done enough?
Oh well, I thought, I’m only one of many, who are being inspired by trees, to find a simpler, more connected way of living that uses less carbon, but makes more fun. And besides my project wouldn’t be over, I realised, till the trees were growing tall, and birds were singing, and bugs were buzzing, and snakes were slithering.
And really, I thought, the project wouldn’t be over – no, not till the snakes go green.