How high does the Sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know.
Two nights ago, on the south side of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, a 300-year-old Sycamore Gap tree was cut down with a chainsaw. It’s the only tree for miles, known for its steadfastness in the windy passageway that delineated old Roman Britannia and the unconquered Caledonia. It’s also known for a famous scene in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
From the moment I heard about the tree being unceremoniously felled, in the dark of night, with no one to protect her, I cried. It feels embarrassing to admit that. Even now as I write, my eyes fill with tears. Lately, I’ve found myself emotional whenever I see rescued animals on Instagram videos or stories of any animal hardship at all. I’ve nearly stopped eating red meat because my throat closes when I think of the gentle cow it came from. It goes without saying that the same tears swell when I see an ad about children in need, or disasters around the world that leave children helpless and sometimes parentless. But this is a tree. She can’t cry out for help or tell us how she feels or woo us with her sad face; she can’t walk away from a bad situation. So why do I feel like I want to wrap my arms around her and comfort her as if she were a hurt child or an orphaned kitten? I want to save her, put a big bandaid around the sawed halves of her gorgeous, fat trunk. Some aboriculturists say that there is a slim chance she could be saved - how, I don’t know. But I implore the universe to make it so.
They say a 16-year-old boy did this. I want to find this boy and I want to chop him in half. I know that “an eye for an eye” is an unhealthy way to think, but so often I find myself wanting to inflict the same kind of pain on those who would inflict it on others. I get angry, so angry, that our world is a place where a teenager thinks that cutting down a 300-year-old tree is okay. It makes me want to step off the wheel and build a hut in a glade in the woods and forget bad people exist. It also makes me want to go out and… I don’t think I can say it. The images in my head are too violent. Too wrong. They feel destructive.
I recently interviewed Ken Burns about his new documentary, American Buffalo. It’s a story of great tragedy — the near-destruction of buffalo at the hands of white men and the knock-on effect to indigenous Americans who were all but eradicated when their sacred animal was taken from them. I asked him why he thought Americans were so destructive — since he’s spent the last 50 years examining America and the people who live in it, and he didn’t have an answer. And of course, it’s not just Americans. It’s Europeans, it’s Russians, it’s men the world over who would wish to destroy, to cut down, to wipe out, to flatten. I get so angry at these men. I get so angry at women who let these men exist. I get so angry at myself for not knowing how to do more, for not doing more, and then for feeling like I too, need to go out and destroy to make it right. Instead, I make a donation here, I sign a petition there. I Tweet and Instagram my rage. And then I wake up to hear that a 16-year-old who I don’t know and could never have had a single ounce of influence over has cut down a 300-year-old Sycamore.
And I cry and take out my credit card to donate to the reforestation of England while little boys turn into big men who destroy things. Who cut us down. And I turn my rage inward.