These old bones that litter our landscapes or stand tall upon our horizons. Bleached and grasping figures that return nutrients to the soil and provide chambers for our wildlife to hide and nest within. Hunting perches for birds of prey. Homes to owls and bats who nurse their young within their hollows. Harbouring seedlings, spawning fungi, sheltering mammals and storing food. Dead trees support more ecosystems dead than alive.

Birds, mammals, insects & reptiles feeding, breeding and sheltering within their embrace. Decayed heartwood and hard sapwood provide the perfect combination of comfort and protection. The biological diversity of our flora and fauna depend upon these decaying bodies to survive.

Imaginings

Just as they nourish our physical existence, they offer as much to our imaginations. The adult, leaving most childhood fancies behind, finds escape and sanctuary in nature. Forests feature in our childhood psyche as places of magic.

In the stories that reared us, dead trees offer powerful symbolism, their gnarled twisted forms providing ghostly forest playgrounds.

We anthropomorphise their shapes as they bend, stoop and reach. Malevolence in their pointed limbs. Faces, fingers and arms, reaching and grasping. A figure with twisted human features. We fashion magical objects from their branches. Staffs and wands capable of changing the fate of those destined to wield it.

Hero’s in myths and legends must pass through the forest to complete their mission. Meeting mythical creatures, good and bad along the way. Dead trees are cast as magical abodes, lurking lairs, and haunted beings. Not only do witches, trolls, fairies and elves hide in the forest, the trees themselves are animated and able to help or hinder.

They are light and dark. Shadow, silence, sun and moon. They are cold, damp, wicked places or warm and secure. Poisonous and sustaining. They are all these things, often at once.