Felled
Sarah Davy, who lives close to Hadrian’s Wall, reflects on the felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap and what it means for her creative practice, her community - and for hope in the age of climate crisis.
Image credit: Mark McNeill
Sarah’s online workshop, Writing Climate Hope is running on December 6th 7-9pm
It’s been over a year since I shelved my novel and decided to work the characters and narrative into a short story collection. Taking place on Hadrian’s Wall during a time of climate change, it charts the people who live, work, and visit there and how these shifts affect their lives and their future. The wall, gap toothed and resilient, is the thread that runs through it, connecting everything and everyone it touches. And on that wall sits a landmark, one that is known to people the world over. Or was.
When I first saw the images of a felled tree, I cried fake news. Then, a trickle of images and posts turned into a flood and finally, confirmation. A tree in two pieces. Sycamore Gap reduced to a gap, the wind whistling through from the South. My immediate reaction was visceral. Shock, anger, disbelief. When a building falls, it can often be repaired, rebuilt. But the felling of a tree is final, a death. Even if it regrows it will never look the way it did, branches stretching skyward, broad leaves rustling and casting shade on passing walkers. As a dialogue began to grow and whispers travelled around our village, then the world, my thoughts turned to my own quandary.
At the heart of my collection is a story about a tree. A very special tree. She recounts what she has seen, what she hopes to see, what she regrets seeing. Wishes she could pass on what she knows to those who pass through. Pilgrims drawing their arms about her trunk. Mourners scattering the ashes of loved ones at her roots. Farmers working to eke out a living on the harsh moorland. A later story charts a tragedy, witnessed by a sapling, as the old tree is taken for another purpose. A portent.
But now, the tree is gone. When I chose to write about the wall, it never occurred to me that it would change. It hasn’t for almost 2000 years. My stories focus on landscape, botany, tourism, farming, and people. Physical, emotional, and environmental changes. I considered the wall built, an unchanging part of the landscape, and think maybe I saw the tree that way.
We know that this isn’t the case, that trees rarely live forever and that one day, we’ll have to say goodbye to them. We fight when they’re threatened with felling, when councils swoop in to change the shape of our town centres, when rail lines crash through our most scared natural places. The love we have for these temporary things is strong and rooted in what we’ve always known. That nature is not something separate from us, but part of us. To move forward, we can’t continue to think of us and them. In so many ways. If we love some parts of nature this deeply, so deeply that we cry out and call for a reckoning, can we not use this energy to make real change? To learn to love everything; the soil that is degrading under our feet, the bees searching in vain for pollen, the swifts darting from place to place unable to find a place to rest.
On the day the tree was felled, the 2023 State of Nature report was published. Only one story made the front pages. There is so much more to nature than one tree. What our reaction tells us is that we are capable of love for all of nature, and that we must find a way back to being part of it, rather than trying to live alongside it and, ultimately, casting it aside.
A few days after the felling, I walked up onto the wall to visit a site for research, and to pay a pilgrimage to the tree. The day was blustery but clear and mild, clouds scudding across the broad Northumberland sky. A perfect day for walking. I made my way tentatively to the gap and was able to place my hand on the trunk of the tree. To listen to her, and to feel what she feels. She is still a living, breathing thing. And that gives me hope.
Sarah Davy is a writer, facilitator and mentor living and working in rural Northumberland. Her short fiction is published online and in print and her plays have been performed in Newcastle, Manchester and London. Sarah was awarded the Finchale Prize for Short Fiction at the Northern Writers Awards in 2023. Her creative non-fiction has been published in Spelt Magazine.
Sarah is working on a short story collection set against a backdrop of climate change, a full length stage play about a rural working class community and a comedy TV series exploring life as a childfree woman.
Sarah’s online workshop, Writing Climate Hope is running on December 6th 7-9pm