Have you ever carved your name or initials into a tree or stone

No! Mindless vandalism!

Lol, okay, I don’t feel quite that strongly about it, but I do think carving your name into a tree is one of the less nice things to do to nature.

Since my brief dabble into Wicca, I really have paid so much more attention to nature and what’s out there. To the language of the trees, the flowers and the air so to speak.

Don’t look at me like that, I’m serious! At this time of year, when most people are bemoaning the short days, long nights and frigid cold, I’m looking at the bushes on my street and gently touching the buds of future blossom that are already there and have been since October/November! I’m looking at the remnants of nests in the skeletal branches of trees and knowing that it won’t be long before they are once more full and I’m tugging a pillow over my head to drown the sound of that freakin’ magpie. I look at the trees that have already been confused into sprouting blossom and feel sad that I’ll miss out on those colours come spring.

So yes… I don’t carve my name on trees. If you need another reason for why, watch this film:

This is my favourite song from the film and one of the scenes that always stays with me is Zac, the bumbling, slightly dippy human carving his faerie friend’s name into a tree. She becomes enraged and flies down to him and presses the flat of his hand against the marks he has made. ‘Can’t you feel its pain?’ She asks.

Like I say… I don’t quite feel like that, but no. Again, I don’t do it.

Stones on the other hand, fragments of the very earth beneath our feet, things older than my brain can even comprehend (despite the Geology degree) have been around so long that it seems most cheeky to carve my name on them. Me and my eye-blink of a life, scarring the surface of something that was here before me, is here now and will be here long after I’m gone. In that respect, its nice to leave a mark on something lasting, but frankly put, that’s what books are for.

I don’t need to scrawl on trees and stones… my books are going to serve the same purpose. ^_^

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.