The assortment of trees in my local park offers a fascinating and tactile experience. Their bark, their skin in effect, is as different and individual as any other living thing; evidence of their struggle and their determination to shoulder the elements.
Whenever I go for a walk, I place a hand on the gnarled bark of these living monuments and take a moment to feel my own insignificance. I look at them reaching into the skies, and imagine their roots creeping down through the soil; making a mirror image of themselves, making their depth equal their height, anchoring themselves to this earth. It feels as if nothing could shake them off. They seem immovable, permanent.
Striking and colourful, the textures are only fully realised underneath my fingertips, like a rugged braille communication from these evolving monoliths. To me, they are organic art, evidence of a slow transformation, of a long journey through the seasons and the years. I like the feel of them, the dependability of their presence.
Basking in the light, or allowing their graceful limbs to yield and sway in the capricious winds, they are the sentinels of our Garden State, reflecting the whims of Melbourne’s inconstant weather.
Some of them nod and wave in the high currents, others stand impassive and immovable in their leafless winter wardrobe. But it’s the low palms that catch my eye, sweeping their fronds across the dusty ground, forming a series of cross-hatched scars like unreadable messages. Beneath their fringed edges they’ve hollowed out a series of pockets in a perfect parabola, their branches scraping at the dirt that tethers them, scooping at the surface as if clutching for a way out of it.
It’s easy to assign a character to each tree, to assume their sentience, to imagine that they radiate stoicism and even safety. Perhaps their size inspires such lofty beliefs, giving ideas of shelter and protection; but it’s when my skin touches bark that I’m reminded they are our guardians on this turbulent spinning planet. I admire how they persevere, how they endure unpredictable conditions with such grace.
At times like this I wish I could paint, but I have to settle for other ways to capture their magnificence – reducing them to a single dimension with just the lens of a camera, the refraction of light, and a spectrum of colour.
Angela J Dawson 