When you are frightened you don't pay attention to much else going on around you, other than whatever it is that threatens you! Ever since late February when the world woke up to the seriousness of what was happening in China, we have lived with the reality of a new Coronavirus and a global pandemic. By March 23 the entire country went into lock down and that is now only changing, ever so slowly and with considerable caution, thank goodness.
To be under house arrest for ten weeks is a restriction of freedom unprecedented in peace time, and not even known in this country in war time. With time to think, none of the usual social activities, work responsibilities or leisure diversions available, it was hardly a recipe for happiness. Exercise, but only once a day for up to an hour, became the one chance to break out of the horizons of our own living room and garden.
Add to that sense of confinement the growing addiction to daily briefings with their litany of distressing statistics; then as we watched and listened and learned, a growing sense of mismanaged strategies and missed opportunities. It was becoming clear this was going to be hard, as hard as anything we had faced together as a country for a long, long time.
Mix into all the above an increasing sense of personal impotence in the face of a threat that was invisible, deadly and loose out there, and the ingredients are all together for a breakdown in social cohesion and confidence. In such a constrained set of circumstances, a large space opened up in our minds, quickly filled with shape shifting shadows of worry, uncertainty, disorientation and trashed plans. So. How to survive a lock down, deal with the strong undercurrents of anxiety, reconfigure life around non-community when every instinct is to be with people in whose company we find strength, love and the resources to keep going?
For myself, I looked for solace where I have discovered it is often to be found – outside my own head. Every day we walked, we looked and listened, and I took photos. Some were quite good, some were naff, and a few were worth sharing with others. But the truth is, even the photos that "failed" were taken for a reason, or on a hunch, or because at the time that moment, or view, or object seemed worth hanging on to a little longer. I look at them now and on one level think they can be deleted without loss; at another level I realise this seemed worth the effort at the time, what did I sense or see there, then?
Like a tree, using its branches to stretch out its claim on the space, an example of arboreal social distancing in a forest. Maybe. During these weeks we have walked often amongst trees. I find an almost biblical affection and affinity for trees. Maybe it goes back to childhood when so much of my time was spent climbing trees. Perhaps it's also the rich texture of biblical references to trees clapping their hands, growing beside rivers of water, and their leaves for the healing of the nations. So a photo with Scots pines, larch, hawthorn, rowan, gorse and broom, barely held in place by an ancient drystane dyke – the photo doesn't capture all of the joy and contentment, but enough to remember the lifting of the heart when looking at them.
Whatever the reason I have found trees comfortable companions. Old trees have been there for perhaps a century or more, symbols of permanence, signs of the health of our natural world, an antidote to the toxins of human acquisitiveness which threatens our entire eco-system. When the worst of this is over, and we are free to be out and about again, I'll go where there are trees, and take time to sense deep, nourishing, stabilising roots beneath my feet. And be grateful.
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