Silent Witness - The View From A Tree
This story is dedicated to Lesley O, and also to anybody who has ever hugged a tree. The idea first seeded itself during a Sunday morning walk through Astley Park, long before COVID. A passing conversation about what the aged trees must have witnessed during their long years sparked my imagination, and I remember saying, half jokingly, that one day I would write a story told by a tree. Lesley, probably won’t even remember that conversation - she was politely bemused by my ramblings at the time (and also in mild shock after a rogue swan chased us away from it's nest). With the environment being such a concern and the value of life, in any form, seeming so cheap, I wanted this piece to be "of its time" and to reflect the world as I see it today. So, with ideas from The Secret Lives of Trees, the quote which follows by Cristen Rodgers and the influences of countless magical trees from childhood, what follows is, in a small way, a completion of that conversation. "Listen...