Believing is seeing
Published: Tue, 10/15/13
When I was a child the Elm tree was a common sight in the
countryside as well as in parks and even large gardens. Then came
Dutch Elm disease and all of these magnificent trees became
infected and had to be cut down. The Elm simply disappeared from
the landscape.
Since I started doing Stav I have tried to train myself to be able
to recognise the significant trees. Some are more common than
others in the UK but they are all represented somewhere, except for
Elm of course which is extinct in this country now. So I would see
a broad leafed hedgerow plant and declare it to be Hazel. Then a
few years ago when I did this Nigel Smith (who taught the bush
craft on the Summer Camp this year) suggested I look a bit closer
at the leaves I was assuming belonged to a Hazel tree. Hazel
leaves are round and bright green but they are also symmetrical.
These leaves were definitely offset at the base meaning that they
were actually Elm trees, albeit very young ones. In fact the Elm
is a very common hedgerow plant, they grow for about 10 or 12 years
and then the beetles find them and kill them. If you look at
hedgerows you will often see small dead trees in amongst the
healthy plants. These are most likely to be Elms which have
suffered from the dreaded Dutch disease.
In fact there are some full grown Elms around the country still, I
am not quite sure how they have survived but I actually climbed in
the branches of a magnificent Elm tree in Norfolk a year or two
back.
I can now see an Elm tree when I am looking at it. I couldn't
before because I didn't believe I would see one anyway and so I
saw Hazel instead. It is very hard to see something that you
don't believe in, especially if you can easily convince
yourself you are seeing something else. When someone who knows
better puts you straight it should be an opportunity to learn
something new and increase your practical knowledge. Sadly beliefs
are sometimes considered more important than evidence and the
consequences can be rather unpleasant.
If you would like some evidence of the benefits of Stav training
then don't miss at least one of the training opportunities
before the end of the year. http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html
regards
Graham
PS At the Stav camp several of us saw UFOs, in the proper sense of
the term in that we couldn't identify the aircraft in question.
About midnight on the second night there was a sound like a truck
coming down the road very fast, I was expecting a crash at the
junction nearby but then it went right over head, low, big and
black and not like anything I had ever seen or heard before. I
would like to believe that it was an alien space craft but in fact
there are several US airforce bases in that part of Norfolk so it
was probably one of theirs on a nightflying exercise.