Washed up

 

We have just been to the North East and storm Arwen had blown down loads of trees.  I kept wanting to stop and photograph them for the tree project but didn't get around to it.  When we were leaving I photographed this tree trunk on the beach. It reminded me of a work by the artist David Nash called "free range sculpture"  Nash carved a boulder shape out of a tree trunk and pushed it from the top of a waterfall. he then follows it's journey over a number of years as it makes its way to the sea.  I think this is a nice work of art, art that makes you see the world slightly differently after you have experienced it.  When I passed all the fallen trees I did think about how much carbon must be about to be released into the atmosphere as all the timber rots and is burnt on fires.  I like to think of storms as natural phenomena, I like to think as humans as natural phenomena. This orientation is something that eco feminist new materialism helps with, Karen Barad meets the universe half-way, she does not draw any lines  or create any boundaries. 

My point in a roundabout way is to ask if the purpose of our trees projects is to come up with ways for us to feel trees differently.  To feel them as entwined with our futures, we are all of the woodland.   This would make sense to me as something courageous and something that contains a kernel of hope, a worthwhile endeavor. The good thing about thinking in this way is that to imagine this as our collective aim is to create a throughline and a holding form for the project.  When asked what I am working on in the treescape project I can answer with something couragous.