Читать книгу Epitaph for the Ash - Lisa Samson - Страница 6

You may walk past the ash – its slenderness and height blend easily into any wood or hedgerow – but in spring you’ll stop to admire the bluebells shimmering in the light that filters through its foliage. The continued existence of the ash tree is under threat from Ash Dieback, a disease that has spread from the Continent and is threatening ash trees in Britain. During the research and writing for this book, I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumour, which changed my life irrevocably, never to be the same again. Epitaph for the Ash is a celebration of the ash and an account of my personal journey as I recorded its decline over the last few years, taking the reader from the lowlands of Norfolk to the uplands of Yorkshire, and from Devon to the northernmost reaches of the British Isles. The book explores the cultural significance of the ash tree, tracing its mythology in Norse culture and through some of the literature on and history of woodlands in Britain.

The ancient woodlands of today are a fraction of the size they were in Anglo-Saxon Britain, as agriculture and industry have gradually encroached on the forests. During the post-war years thousands of acres of woodland were given over to agricultural production or buildings to accommodate a burgeoning population. As the elms were ravaged by Dutch Elm Disease in the latter half of the twentieth century, the importance of the ash as a habitat for rare flora and fauna increased. Trees, like any living organism, have always suffered from blight and disease, but the loss of most of our elms, and now the danger to the ash poses a serious environmental threat.

In May 1978, I clearly recall my mother bristling with pride as she showed me a copy of the Sunday Times Magazine, which featured my uncle’s new book, Epitaph for the Elm. Gerald Wilkinson was her older brother, the eccentric tree expert. We saw little of him, but occasionally he would stop by in his old Volkswagen camper-van on his way to or from one of his extended research trips in the woodlands of Britain. To a town child like me, with a yearning for the open countryside, this seemed the most romantic way to spend your life, and I’m sure I begged him to take me with him.

I’ve been communing with trees since I was young and sometimes fancy they are aware of me. The brightest days of my childhood were when my family and I got onto a bus into the countryside, then walked through the woods and fields, picnicking under a tree. I’d roam away from the others and listen to the trees whispering. I never wandered too far because I was afraid of my own shadow and would imagine danger lurking behind hedgerows and in the depths of the dark wood. I’ve always loved trees for their swaying limbs and shady canopies, so easy to draw, but it is only as an adult that I have learned to regard them as friends. They’re good company and they do talk if you stop to listen.

I was too young to understand the full impact of Dutch Elm Disease, but as I grew up and my own interest in trees deepened, I often referred to Gerald’s books. His death in a car crash in 1988 fuelled my intention to learn more about his obsession with them. Now, nearly three decades later, it is predicted that Chalara fraxinea, the fungus that causes Hymenoscyphus fraxineus or Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus – Ash Dieback – will ravage the ash trees, again changing Britain’s landscape. It was found in the wild in Britain in 2012, in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, and since then it has spread relatively quickly, with new cases reported often in the press. My home county of Yorkshire will seem barren without the ancient ashes protruding from limestone scars and chalky cliff faces, or spreading their fine canopies over the hedgerows.

The ash’s status as a ‘magic’ tree with healing properties gives it a fascinating history. Gerald suggests that in Neolithic times ‘the Ash may have been sacred’. Druids regard it as such, and in Norse mythology the ash was the Tree of Life, the most important living thing besides humans. It is one of our strongest trees, used for framework in vehicles and tool handles, but craftspeople and manufacturers are already using other materials.

Across the length and breadth of Britain place names are associated with the ash – Ash, Ashburton, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Ashbourne, Ash-cum-Ridley, Ashover, Ashwater, Ashtead, Ashkirk, Ashcot, Ashwell – anthropological mnemonics linking people to their places. Some will have been named after self-sown ash seeds that blew on the wind, others for the ash their inhabitants cultivated, but all bear testimony to the part the ash has played in our civilization.