Be flexible. That's one of the modern mantras, but what if you're not designed for flexibility? What if you're designed for sturdy? What if you are more oak than willow? I speak whereof I know. My wise man laughed when I said my favourite trees are the silver birch and the weeping willow. "No," he said, "you are much more oak than willow."
I could not be offended by that. Willowy is an adjective that would never have fitted me, even at my most lithe and flexible, in my sapling days. Even then it was clear I was destined to be more oak. Solid. Deep rooted. A firm-standing strength that would see me broken before I bent.
And I have been broken. Not physically. Not mentally, to any great degree. But emotionally, time and time again. Like an oak tree struck by lightning, I have lost a branch or two. There are healed scars, smoothed by the seasons since. Still, I stand. Rooted in the soil of an earth that was my birth-gift.
Our personal root-earth may be a physical place, that we do not leave or that calls us back, or it may be a metaphorical, metaphysical, space – an idea, a value-set, a belief-system, or just our own certain centre. To be deep-rooted does not mean to be stationary in the physical realm – but it does mean to hold fast, to stand strong, to limit the degree to which you are willing to bend to accommodate the storms of life.
They say that we should bend in the wind. Tell that to the oak. We know our place in the world. In my native land, the oak is the great supporter of life. The UK Woodland Trust claim English Oak woodlands support 2,300 species through their gifts of food and habitat. Of those 2,300 it is said that 326 depend upon the oak for survival, and 229 are rarely found anywhere other than on oak. I am no expert. I would not know a purple hairstreak butterfly or a dark crimson underwing moth from any other lepidoptera – but they serve as two examples who rely solely upon this tree. The oak-mining bee is another flying critter heavily dependent.
Acorns feed badger, boar and wood mouse, woodpecker, rook and nuthatch. And of course the beautiful jay birds (Garrulusglandarius) who specialise in taking the fruit and burying for later what they cannot use right now; the jay encouraging the oak to grow, by its own forgotten planting.
The bark in living and giving and falling away gives nesting opportunities to Bechstein's bats and barbastelles. Fly-catchers and tree-creepers hunt in these nooks and crannies.
And all of that before we reach down into the tiny lichen forests that grow on our native giants. Seven hundred and sixteen lichens, liverworts and mosses set up their home on the wood-skin of this tree. One rare specimen depends on the tree living to its ripeness. Lecanactidetum premneae tend to need their host to be over 250 years of age.
So tell me again that a tree must bend in the wind. A tree can stand strong, inflexible, bravely prepared to shed not only leaves but limbs in the storms of centuries, root-fast, and protective. Not only can it do so, but other aspects of life need it to do so.
I wasn't born to bend, or to flow. I was born to stand tall and strong, and to withstand the things that go wrong. I have grown to support the life that is attracted to me, and I don't need to have the showiest blooms around. If my wind-dance is slower than most, that's only because it plays over a longer time, to the winds of climate rather than of weather. I dance to the song of time.
You can't teach an oak to be a willow.
Or an ash to be a yew.
Be the tree you were born to be.
Just be you.
When Iam asked to be flexible and bend like a tree, I am tempted to ask: which tree?
I do bend - in oak-slow time.
Information source: Oak trees and wildlife - Woodland Trust
