Where the Ash Tree Stands

Not too far from our farm, just a short drive or a long walk over the hill, past the forestry where the ravens roost and down a rough, unpaved road, tucked into a wooded dip on the edge of the next valley, an ash tree stands. A veteran ash, deeply fissured and knotted with age, she spirals high above the surrounding canopy. She stands hale and verdurous, untouched by the dieback disease that has ravaged through her sisters and daughters. Her strong, gnarled trunk, as thick as the old, stone ditch she grows from, twists this way and that, spiralling, gyrating up into the sky as though she dances with the starlings that flock to her branches, arms twirling up and out in praise of the open sky. She is beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful tree I have ever seen, though all trees are beautiful in their way. But this tree’s beauty calls to me. I want to know her, to trace my fingers through the cracks in her old skin, stand barefoot on the soil and be pulled with her roots into the deep earth and stretch my arms around her thick girth and feel her life run through her. Listen to the songs she sings as she dances with the wind, watch the light flicker through her silhouette against the bright, white sky and taste her medicine in the rain that drips from her luscious greenery. And I will do all of these things.

Behind the ash tree stood a house of stone, with walls two feet thick, strong and cool. An old house, more than a hundred years old, built on the ruins of an even older house, even older than the ash tree, from another time. A house of many lives, many lifetimes. A house of ghosts and memories.

In the centre of the house was a wide, open hearth, built of chiselled slabs of stone and oak beams as thick as a man. A cold hearth, its fire long dead, holding only blackened ashes and dust and the stink of damp and decay. The memories of warmth and home. I stood at that hearth a year and a month ago. I ran my fingers over crumbling plaster and peeling paint and felt the solidness of the oak beams and I imagined the hearth alive and crackling, casting dancing shadows on whitewashed walls. Perhaps the men who built that hearth so long ago rested their backs under the shade of the ash tree, younger then, fresh and vibrant. Perhaps they washed the dust and sweat from their brows and drank from the stream that runs beside her. I like to imagine it so. Perhaps they pressed their calloused palms against her then smooth, young skin as they rested and laughed, and she absorbed and folded their sweat and laughter into her fibres, took their memories deep into the core of her wood, rooted them into the substrate of this place. What other memories does she hold? The memories of the land? Of generations of lives that lived and died on the homestead she keeps and the melodies of blackbirds and song thrushes and children’s laughter?

What memories were held in that house of stone? Good memories, I know. I felt them. I felt them in the stones. I felt them at the hearth, the memories of warmth and home. I felt them in the garden, too. I tasted them in the apple offered to me plump and sweet from the old apple tree and in the strawberries, tiny and sweet, that glittered like jewels along the paths, and I felt them in the earth, trodden into the stone paths and I heard them whispered in the breeze and carried in the songs of the blackbirds.

And hard times, too. Hunger. Strife written in the stone ruins of the house that stood before, horrors held witness by the stones. The Great Hunger hit hard here. Yes, there were ghosts here. If ghosts are memories. Memories held in earth and stone and the spirit of a place.

They are gone now, those memories. Cleansed by fire. Consumed by searing flame. Cracked and spat and spewed into blackened sky. All that’s left are ashes. Ashes and charred stone and shattered glass. Rubble and dust. An empty shell of a house standing open to the heavens. A ghost of a house that holds no ghosts.

I am here now, standing in the threshold of the ruins of the house of stone. Standing in the rubble. The ash tree dances over me, over the ruins. Swallows swoop and gather on the old telephone lines. Blackbirds sing. A warped piece of a window pane droops, bent and blistered, clinging to its molten frame above me. Above the threshold. A chill breeze picks up dust and rustles gently through the bay tree that taps on the wall outside. Its oily, aromatic leaves are untouched, unscathed by the flames. How can that be? An inferno of six hundred degrees celsius—the heat it takes to bend glass—contained within these thick, stone walls. The weeds and strawberries growing from the cracks in the render are still green. But the stone walls are blackened, cracked and compromised. In time they will crumble. Nothing inside survived. No rafter, no oak beam, no picture frame, no hearth, no memory. There are no ghosts here now. They were released to the stars in flames and sparks.

The house we were trying to buy, scrimping and borrowing and begging the banks for, with all its ghosts and memories, was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground.

We watched the storm that night from our shepherd’s hut, over the hill. We counted the miles between the flashes and the crashes—one mile, two miles, thr—as the storm broke right over these hills. If we had been looking west at some ungodly hour in the thick of the night we’d have seen the “blue flash” described by a neighbour—the flash of lightning that struck an electricity pole and ran down the wiring to set the house we were trying to buy alight from the inside. To burn its memories and set its ghosts free.

It was a blessing, they are telling us, the house should have been knocked. The house was old and decrepit and riddled with dry rot. We were saved by the grace of God from a lifetime of debt for a house of ghosts and rot.

But the ash tree still stands. She still dances. Living. Breathing. Witness to it all. The starlings still flock to her and the apple still gives and the blackbirds still sing and the strawberries still glitter like jewels along the paths, and the bay tree still taps at the crumbling walls.

The breeze swirls and the ash tree sways, beckoning, calling to me. Calling me home.

She can have me. She can fold me into her wood with the blackbird’s song and the sweat of the men who built this old house of stone and when I die a piece of me will live in her, flow through her sap with the memories of the land, rooted to the earth, dancing with the wind, grounded into the substrate of this place that feels like home.

I close my eyes and the house is no longer a ruin. I feel the solidity and warmth of a new building behind me, timbers fresh and clean, clay warm and stone smooth and cool. The late morning sun kisses my face, warms my bare feet on the doorstone. The earthy, savoury scent of the bay tree lifts in the breeze and mingles with fresh sawn timber and the homely smells of coffee, sourdough and wood fire from the hearth inside. A new hearth, it's fire alive and crackling, casting dancing shadows on freshly whitewashed walls. I will make a new home here. I will cast new memories into the hearth, set new stories into the stones, tread new footprints into the earth. I will stay here, and give my sweat and soul to this place where the ash tree stands.