Joanna Rial

So a #tree was cut down. A sycamore. A species I’ve often heard referred to as ‘dirty’. Yeah for sure it was in a fortuitous location that made it more than the tree it was. And the right place and time phenomena made it a Hollywood star back in the day. So the lovers and dreamers came to make promises and dream in her presence. The image makers captured her dramatically. The travellers smiled and paused with the familiar stranger… And then some gouger took a chainsaw to her and she is no longer. She’s dead. Gone. Before her time. Left exposed and humiliated on the ground where she fell. And the outcry begins. The social media frenzy. The outpouring of grief, anger and opinion. The memories. The stories. The conjecture. The hopes and prayers. The need for blame. For punishment. But for how long? And for what? Nothing will bring her back. She’s gone. They’ll talk of art, regrowth, replacement. But it won’t be her. The icon. The star. A few days for the further afield and we’ll move on. Those in the immediate vicinity will be left with the loss. The empty space. But that too will gradually fade. We’ll move on to the next nature tragedy. To do it all over again. Destroy. Repeat. Destroy. Repeat. There’ll always be a gouger. A chainsaw. A bully. That’s the way it is. Isn’t it? It’s now inevitable. Or is it? Could this be one of those moments? You know the ones. That cut too far. That misdeed that mattered. That single action that unwittingly set the chain in motion. When they cut down the entire forest over time we often don’t see the trees. The crime. When they cut down the tree in a moment we see the space. We see the crime. All the crimes. What if this single sycamore and that dastardly act was a beginning not an end? What if it galvanised all of the pent up grief and disappointment in ordinary decent people which is looking for a release. A focus. A hero fallen to elevate and carry on their shoulders? Where is it written that the hero must be human? What if this fallen tree represented more than an ignorant act leading to a sad ending? What if we rejected the boy with the chainsaw and instead sought once more the boy who pulled the sword from the stone? What if it represented the shit they pour daily into your #rivers and #seas? The poisons they spread throughout the land. The #hedgerows ripped and smashed. The #foxes and #badgers tortured and murdered. The disappearing #bees, #birds and #butterflies. The once fresh #air that is now too just a fiction. What if it represented all of those other less celebrated #trees only one bad decision away from a similar but less noticed fate. What if this was the tipping point that saw the voiceless, the timid, the bullied, the dismissed, the dreamers, the ordinary, the good that is still in us, gather quietly in villages, towns and cities below sycamores still standing and say without words or conflict enough? Enough. We see. We see. We see an empty space where once stood a tree. We see the future. We see…