In the north isles, the great trees of yew, beech, oak, and fir dominate a land shaped by ice. Massive trees from the south arrived with the Romans – cedar, chestnut, mulberry and fig – grown huge on solstice rains and solar winters.
Five hundred years later, during Arthur’s reign, the immense trees of north and south had worked out their differences. Their songs of rain and frost – their resinous prophecies and prayers of pollen and mycorrhizal fungi – had coalesced to a commanding presence: titanic trees that stood together above the forest, waiting – on guard against the unspeakable darkness they sensed looming where tomorrow abides. Their attention would not yield, not until the Vikings swarmed with their axes three centuries later.
When the Dark Ages rose, the great trees fell into their shadows and dimmed to myth: The ash tree of Yggdrasil. The hazelnut of Druid knowledge. The forbidden trees of Eden. We do not know what they were before. We have turned our memory away from them. Yet, their legend dreams us even now, colossal lanterns of water illuminating without shadow our fearful and mapless journey after Camelot.