5 September: Boreham on Sparing Trees

Spare That Tree
Spasmodic efforts are made from time to time to inspire the people of Australia with a sense of solicitude and reverence for native trees. Few people realise the extent to which these lands have been impoverished by the wanton destruction of their forests. It has been estimated that since settlement began, three-quarters of our timber has vanished, and, of that prodigious quantity, less than 5 percent has been put to any practical use. The huge bulk of it has just gone up in smoke.

Unhappily, the fight for the forest runs counter to one of our deepest human instincts. Mr. Gladstone used to say that there is nothing on earth so invigorating as the joy of chopping down a tree. A wild delight makes the heart beat faster and sends the blood pounding through the veins as one feels the rhythmic swing of the axe, sees the chips fly, watches the gash grow deeper, and notices at last that the stately monster is about to yield to one's will. Richard Jefferies, the eminent naturalist, who hated to destroy things and often could not bring himself to pull the trigger of his gun, nevertheless felt the fascination of the axe. Why, he asks, is the felling of a tree so unutterably thrilling ?

Primitive Man Reveres The Forest
The question is of perennial interest. As we contemplate the fallen tree, the damage done seems so irreparable. It is easy enough to humble the pride of these woodland giants, but who shall restore them to their former grandeur? In their best moments, men, even under the rudest and most primitive conditions, have extended the hospitality of their hearts to such pensive thoughts. In his "Golden Bough," Sir James G. Fraser says that the Ojibwa Indians hate to fell a living tree; it puts the graceful thing, they argue, to such intense pain. Some of their medicine men aver that, with their occult powers of hearing, they have been horrified by the wailing and the screaming of the trees beneath the axe.

In East Africa the destruction of the coconut tree is regarded as a form of matricide, since the tree ministers life and nourishment to men as a mother does to her child. The early Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plutarch, watching the swaying of the beautiful branches, came to the conclusion that trees are sentient things, possessed of living souls. And, in his "Tales for Children," Tolstoy makes as pathetic a scene out of the death of a great tree as many a novelist makes out of the death of a gallant hero.

Mysticism Is Inherent In Trees
It must have been this subtle consciousness of a sanctity haunting the leafy solitudes that led man to regard the forest with superstitious veneration. Directly or indirectly, the forest seemed to supply all that he needed; it therefore seemed divine. The representation of a sacred tree occurs repeatedly, carved upon the stony ruins of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Phoenician temples, whilst Herodotus more than once remarks upon the frequency of tree-worship among the ancient peoples. Pliny, too, marvelled at the reverence which the Druids felt for the oak, and, in a scarcely less degree, for the holly, the ash, and the birch. And what stirring passages those are in which George Borrow describes the weird rites and dark symbolism of the gipsies as they worshipped at dead of night in the fearsome recesses of the pine forests of Spain!

Milton held that the forest, which had played so large a part in the development of this world, will flourish also in the next. There, he says, "the trees of life ambrosial fruitage bear and vines yield nectar." Had he been challenged, the author of "Paradise Lost" would probably have reminded his questioner of the apocalyptic passage which depicts a tree of faceless beauty and of healing virtue waving luxuriously by the side of the river of life. Even on the lowliest plane, there is something sacramental about trees. George Gissing declares that Odysseus cutting down the olive in order to build for himself a home is a picture of man performing a supreme act of piety.

Gene Stratton Porter's Harvester caught his breath as he realised that the trees that he was felling were yielding up their lives in order that he and his dream girl might dwell in security and bliss. And, on a green hill far away without a city wall, another tree was cut down years ago that it might represent to all men everywhere the means of grace and the hope of glory. Even more than all the other trees, the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations.

F W Boreham

Image: Trees