Trees

It is 35 years ago, the summer of 1990. Mandela had been released and I was waiting in London with a group of South African exiles for repatriation.

I was training as an arborist that year, working hard climbing trees each day. In the evenings and on the weekends, I joined a group of good people, Hackney Friends of the Earth.

At the heart of Platbos Forest stands a milkwood tree, it’s stem leans out at an angle, hollowed and knotted. It has stood there for 1000 years at least. It is not big, its trunk is over a meter wide and true to the name of the forest it grows in, the canopy is about 5 meters tall.