I AM not a tree-hugging hippy and I don't believe in God, so why, then, does this quote from John Muir, the Scottish-born preservationist and father of America's national parks, invoke in me such deep pathos?
"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools."
Certainly, from a practical or utilitarian perspective, we should remember our trees when we s
it on our favourite chair, jot a phone number on a scrap of paper or huddle inside our homes by the fire, burning bright and warm.
They are our elders and help to mark our seasons; skeletal in the winter, limey in the spring, deep-green in summer and crimson in autumn.
Not every place on the planet has the climate conducive to tree growth, and those that can support a healthy tree population should be encouraged to do so, especially in this age of potential climate change.
The charity Scottish Native Woods (SNW) holds the same opinion. After the last Ice Age, 80 per cent of Scotland was covered in woodland. Now that figure is just 2 per cent. Its aim is to "rescue, restore and expand Scotland's native (natural] woodlands". So now I tithe a portion of my profits from eBay sales to SNW.
It's a meagre amount, but from small acorns, as they say.
Then there is the continuing success of the Central Scotland Forest Trust, which last week reported that it was halfway through an ambitious 20-year plan to cover an area the size of Glasgow – 34,000 hectares – into woodland areas. It has already planted 13 million trees in the Central Belt.
In truth, we owe these primordial beings so much more; after all, so much of our heritage is incumbent within our ancient woods.
A thread of Celtic and Germanic veneration of trees has long run within these isles, from charred hazelnut mounds found on Colonsay – evidence that early hunter gatherers worked together to manage and cultivate trees as a food source – to the avenue of poplars that inspired Hopkins to write Binsey Poplars, and on to Macbeth's oak in Perthshire's Birnam Wood.
In 1666, Newton watched an apple fall from a tree and came up with his theory of gravitation and around the time of the primordial soup a serpent shacked up in a tree stirred things up by taking Eve on a walk on the wild side.
This year, a tree bestowed upon me my best birthday present, a glass jar filled with home-harvested maple syrup, sent to me by a friend in Vermont who grew up in an orchard and has as much reverence for nature and the seasons as his compatriot Emerson.
We Scots may forget, but we even have our very own Yggdrasil (Norse world tree), the Fortingall yew in Perthshire, estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000
years old and said to be the oldest tree in Europe.
Although we have found no archaeological evidence, it has long been thought that the Celts worshipped around trees in sacred groves and this natural creation of what the ancient Greeks called a "temenos" – or sacred place for worship – was purloined by Christians, who built churches on the same sites.
The Fortingall yew is celebrated in the latest issue of literary magazine Granta by the nature writer Richard Mabey, who includes this beautiful insight: "The quest for the secret of the yews is not an exercise in historical ecology but a kind of spiritual genealogy, a yearning for Avalon, for the deciphering of a rune showing how we left the path of true religion."
In the past, the evergreen yew represented immortality, a theory further enhanced by the fact that they start to grow again as they reach their 500th year.
While the yew seed is poisonous, its garnet-coloured aril, or flesh, is harmless. But the very substance that makes the tree deadly can also help save lives. The chemotherapy drug Taxol is derived from the poisonous bark of the Pacific yew tree and the needles of the European species.
I recently paid my respects to Scotland's most senior tree. It is housed in a cage of sorts, and I approached it with the trepidation of a forced conjugal visit to Hannibal Lecter, but the whole experience was more redolent of a visit to see Ling Ling the panda. It sits impassively, like a contented Buddha, but it was I who received the enlightenment, that I had to do more to protect my native woodland.
The full article contains 775 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
