Entranced by Trees by Malcolm Welshman
I’ve always had a love of trees even after I fell out of one and broke my neck.
The merest hint of a breeze sighing through pine needles sends my mind tumbling back to when I was a nine-year-old boy in Nigeria. Here, in the far corner of the compound of our army bungalow, stood a tall pine tree. That solitary conifer towered over the garden, dwarfing the exotic tangle of hibiscus, canna lilies and frangipani trees spread out below it. And it fascinated me.
At its base, I could only half-embrace the trunk in my arms; but by carefully, levering myself up through the ladder-like spread of its branches, I could reach the top; and here, I’d perch, swaying back and forth, enveloped by a balmy breeze and cerulean sky.
It was inevitable that in time, I would request a treehouse. Father duly obliged with the construction of a platform some 30 feet up the tree. But I fancied turning it into a proper little house.
‘Dad. Can I have some walls and a roof?’
Wooden walls and a roof were built.
Mother’s turn next.
‘Mum. Can I have some curtains and cushions?’
Curtains and cushions were made.
So, I ended up with a very smart chalet hidden in the dappled shade of that pine tree, supported on a platform lashed across two sturdy boughs. Here, I could retreat from the heat of the day, fanned by the breeze, listening to it whispering in the needles while I gazed across to the red rusty-roofed town of Ibadan, a shimmering blur on the sun-scorched hills across the valley.
During a particularly severe tropical storm at the commencement of the rainy season, my little house collapsed in on itself. Only when the storm had passed, did I venture back up. The platform, still solid, was to be cleared. Over went the wooden walls and roof crashing down through the branches. I picked up the soggy cushions, tossed them over the edge. I picked up the bundle of curtains. Out fell a snake – a small, mottled brown viper. It hit the platform with a thud, hissed angrily and rapidly wound into a coil, mouth open, ready to strike.
I screamed and stepped back – into empty air. Only a wild dive at an overhanging branch prevented me from toppling over to join the cushions and timber splattered on the lawn below me. And there I remained, suspended like a hammock, arms round the branch, heels resting on the edge of the platform. At the slightest movement the snake hissed and lashed out.
Having heard my initial scream, our houseboys came to my rescue. One climbed the tree and winkled the snake off with a broom. It bounced down through the branches to be met with a sharp blow from the boy on the lawn. I hoisted myself back onto the platform and scrambled down shaken but unharmed.
Roll the years forward by ten, to when, as a student, I was again sitting up a tree. This time a beech tree. I had climbed into the crook of a heavy bough that overlooked a badger sett, the idea being that at that height any emerging badger would not detect my scent.
It was a beautiful tree – a lacy canopy of green below which was a misty blur of bluebells, their delicate scent eddying with the evening breeze. As night fell and no badgers had emerged, I’d decided it was time to descend. As I gingerly eased myself up to balance on the bough, there was a loud crack. The bough broke and I plunged down to thump onto the bank of bluebells, my head snapping back violently. It left me with a fractured neck and six weeks immobilised in hospital.
But it did nothing to dampen my love of trees.
In my forties, I lived in a wing of a Tudor house, in the driveway of which was a 400 year-old sweet chestnut. And what a wonderful specimen this tree was. Gnarled, deeply notched grey-brown trunk with vast limbs arching out and up. Just begging to be climbed. And to which I succumbed. To sit in the deep shade of its canopy, suspended above the gravel drive. To imagine the countless number of horse-drawn carriages that had skimmed below on journeys down from London. The house had belonged to one of Henry V111’s lawyers. Who knows, one may have passed beneath those boughs with written instructions to have Anne Boleyn beheaded.
I wasn’t the only one to relish the presence of that sweet chestnut. The bole of the tree was hollow and an ideal haven for little owls to nest, squirrels to dart through, and bats to roost; and was also a delight for one other person. My daughter, Rebecca, who at the age of four learnt to swing from the plank I’d roped to one the tree’s boughs.
Even now, in my late seventies, trees still have a special meaning for me. I live in a Victorian house surrounded by trees planted over a hundred years ago, carefully positioned to give a balanced vista. From my kitchen window, I gaze across the lawn to the domed splendour of an acer – a joy to see in the burnished reds and yellows of its autumnal leaves. Adjacent to it, the lofty sweep of a wellingtonia points heavenwards. And nearby, a secret grotto of redwoods. The bark of their trunks turn pink in the setting sun. Their needles glow. They engulf me in woodland magic.
Likewise for my eight-year old grandson. I see the light gleam in his eyes as he gazes up through those sculptured redwood trunks, enticing him to climb them, to lose himself in the beauty of their boughs. Just as I had done in that pine tree so many decades ago in Nigeria.
He turns to look at me, his blue eyes questioning, and I know what he’s going to say.
‘Grandad, can I have a treehouse?
Sun's rays through the pine trees
Acer, Maincombe
