The author as an arborist.
The loveliest writing concept I know looks rather awful in real life.
The first time I saw in real life the loveliest writing concept I know was in the small village of Nages, near the ancient Roman town of Nîmes in the south of France. The loveliest writing concept I know lined the small square of Nages, skirting around an out-of-favor parish church, and shadowed one side of the street every morning and the other side of the street every afternoon.
The loveliest writing concept I know appears in real life every other winter or so in Nages, and across Europe, and likely far beyond that, and it takes the form of a tree. But it may not be a tree as you’re picturing it.
For the trees of Nages have been pollarded. If you are not an arborist (and if you are I envy you for it), pollarding, and its close relation coppicing, is the ancient practice of hard pruning the upper branches of a tree down to the core of the trunk structure. Thus every few winters the trees of Nages and those across Europe and likely others far beyond that are relieved of all but the core branches. For a season, each tree suffers the indignities of looking more like an arm and fist than a tree, with nobbly knuckles of stubby branches where breadth and foliage should rightly be. As I said, they look just awful if you’re looking for looks.
But the municipal gardeners of Nages know that pollarding ensures that the essential energy of the growth stays close to the core and extends longevity. Indeed, pollarded trees live longer because they are kept in a state of juvenile growth, and are freed from the weight and risk of damage from overgrowth.
And so the shoots of the new growth allow each tree to exist both as an ancient being deeply rooted in the earth and as a tender sapling reaching eagerly into the sky to kiss the sunlight.
Would that all writing can exist in this duality of ancient, rooted form and carefree new growth. Would that we could all be so brave as to pollard our writing as the French do their trees, knowing that after a time of nobby indignity there will emerge leaves and leaves and leaves in abundance.
