The Wisdom of Oaks

Centuries old, withstanding flood, war and the march of time.

An ancient oak tree in Bartonsham Nature Reserve

On one of our favourite walks we pass this majestic oak tree. I’ve often wondered how old it might be. A light bit of Googling and some unreliable maths brings me to the conclusion it is between 200 and 350 years old. A living thing that has spun through the seasons all that time. Giving shade to farm workers, perhaps, resting from their labours. Or shelter for pilgrims, on their way to St Thomas’s shrine at the cathedral. Or yielding firewood to warm a hundred hearths. Providing a place of safety for generations of nesting birds, and food for a thousand foraging squirrels. A home for myriad butterflies and beetles. Countless lives sustained, improved or enhanced, simply by its quiet, steady presence.

Among the healthy boughs sit the ‘widow makers’

For all its benevolence, trees of such size should be sat beneath or climbed with caution. A natural part of its growth and development is that some branches will fall victim to pests or weather. These boughs, sometimes the size of smaller trees themselves, become unstable and ultimately die. The tree can shed them without compromising its own structural integrity or even noticing their loss, it has so many healthy ones remaining. Pity the hapless camper who chose the wrong time to pitch a tent in the tree’s shadow when one of these widow makers makes its sudden descent.

This particular oak, if I am at least close in my estimation of its age, has lived through twelve English monarchs, civil war, years of drought, annual floods, heavy snowfall, and temperatures from -15 to 36 degrees centigrade. It was an acorn when the country witnessed Regicide, and a sapling as the population lived through its only years as a commonwealth. As a young tree it grew through the rise and fall of the British Empire, the Napoleonic Wars, and the entire Industrial Revolution. As a noble behemoth it stood strong while planes carrying bombs to the city port of Liverpool rumbled overhead. It cast its moon shadows, undisturbed, when man first tore through the filament into space. It held its ground as the city grew and advanced. Now the field in which it continues to grow has been declared a Nature Reserve, so that the ancient tree, with all its long accumulated wisdom, is protected, safe to live out its remaining years unmolested. How lucky we are to have such a magnificent witnesses to the passing of time and the follies and endeavours of man just there, right there, along the path and across the field, next the river and under the broad, blue sky.

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