The Rowan Tree and the Foxglove

The wind blew on the hill at the back of the house. As he looked out of the window on that autumn afternoon, the boy could see the angry flailing of the fir trees at the farthest stretches of the property. Lower down and within easier reach of the back door, somewhat sheltered from the main blast was the more gentle waving of the mountain ash. The red berries were a sharp contrast to the dominant green of the scene.  The boy looked away.

Years and miles distant from this moment, the man looked wistfully at the picture on the wall. It was unmistakable as a mountain ash but this time it hung low on the bank of a lake. The man reflected on why he now thought of it as a mountain ash because in earlier times it would have been a rowan tree or a ‘rodden’ as locally known. He had heard songs and read poems, many dedicated exclusively to the romance of the tree itself. In the case of the poem, “The Whistle”, it was a schoolboy cutting a branch off the tree to allow him to make his own music.

“He cut a sappy sooker frae a muckle rodden tree”

And so the pathos of the poem continues to its conclusion  when the school master had had enough of the laddie’s whistling and seized the offending instrument and spitefully burnt it.

The boy was roaming on the hillside by the river on a sunny, warm day. He had played with his pals, attacking forts on the hill, sneaking up on the ‘enemy’ shooting them with his imaginary weapon and playing again as everybody came back to life for the umpteenth time. On one occasion, he was creeping through the brush when he slipped over a bank and found himself in a sandy culvert, part of an old disused farm track. In the corner of  which stood a solitary foxglove, upright and proud, defiant in its aloneness, its purple bells seemingly ready to peal.  The boy was more intent on his game than studying the scene. Yet the foxglove registered. Somewhere deep inside of him, there was the memory of the moment which would remain. The boy became the man, the memory faded in and out of his consciousness, sometimes triggered by the most unlikely of moments, but always, always it came upon him when  foxgloves came across his vision.

So now the memory of the rowan tree and the foxglove have achieved an iconic status. They have assumed a place and a status in my life which they did not have as a boy running free. They have become more important to me as the years have gone by. They have meandered through my memory and gladdened my being .

The mind plays tricks does it not, Dear Friends, and I suppose that the reason I am reflecting on this at this moment is that the mind also provides a haven, a little piece of Shangri-la when disastrous events are minatory in their constancy. Here in BC we are in the third State of Emergency of the year. Personally and locally we are fine, we are dry, we are well fed, we have heat and power. But not far from here there have been the forest fires during the heat dome of the summer, the environmental stream of the last month or so and thus the destruction of forests, roads and railways through mudslides and flooding. People have lost their village to fire in the case of Lytton, their town to floods in the case  of Merrett. People have lost their lives.  I suppose that many of us who are physically safe have probably lost some of our blasé equanimity, suffered a blow to our Canadian confidence and maybe, just maybe, been given a kick in our preening arrogance enough to remind us that if we are peacocking our plumage and boasting how much better and well prepared and well endowed with’ know how’ we are compared to the rest of the world then we just aren’t. We are as much disabled by unforeseen events as anywhere else  and that is a reminder, if one was needed, that we need to be generous with our vaccines,  supportive with our wealth, practical with our aid because, Dear Reader, if we neglect the back garden while making the front look good then we are building a brittle foundation. The emperor will indeed have no clothes.

We all know that nature wins in the end and that, at least, is one reassurance.  But the world’s climate is out of balance and I know that my friends, Mary and Syd, in drought ridden New South Wales would have been so grateful for 30 minutes of the rain that we have had for days.

So, friends, when I go to bed, stroll out on my walk and let my mind wonder, I will cast back to the rowan tree and foxglove of my childhood and stretch those brief instances of unnoticed joy into something they were not, into something they have become, a serene constancy in an inconstant world.