Oak Trees - Ships of the Landscape

We've been planting lots of trees here on the farm, hazels, willows, cherries, rowan, blackthorn, hawthorn and, mixed in here and there with them all, some oaks...

 

How amazing to hold in your hand for a moment a baby oak, which might grow into a mature tree and live for anything up to a thousand years, like the old oaks just found on Churchill's estate. How much human nonsense have they lived through? It also made me think just how wonderful these oaks are, like ships of the landscape. True treasure ships, roaring in the wind as they travel through time, sheltering such rich abundancies of life. True gold, not the vain gold of oligarchs, bishops and princes. Even after death these golden-hearted oaks go on serving us with their stout timber, in framework that can last for hundreds more years...

 

How sad that oaks are suffering from disease, and what a grim tragedy if they go the way of the elms and other vanished trees you don't hear about so much like Brazilian Rosewood, which gave one of the prime woods for musical instrument making, now gone. Every action we take ripples down through time, along with baby trees we hold the future of life on Earth in our hands.