Oaken Wood
@ Chris Couch

Save Oaken Wood: The collective grief of losing nature

This guest blog is written by Rachel Rodwell, councillor and campaigner. She explores the growing fear many of us feel in relation to the destruction of our environment, and also the hope we must hold onto - which lies in the earth itself...

"Why does it physically hurt when we see multiple trees being ripped from the roots and green fields ploughed and scarred, ready for yet more development? There is a growing sense of collective unease in our communities as something we once considered 'permanence', such as ancient woodland like Oaken Wood, is viewed simply as a commodity to be destroyed at will.

Existential Trauma is now a reality and there is a feeling of helplessness in preventing the catastrophe which is unfolding before our very eyes and runs like an open wound. In contrast, our natural environment nurtures and heals. It does not make demands or threaten our autonomy. It simply grows and expresses itself through its cyclical, seasonal journey…rich in the texture of chestnut bark, moss and wet grass, the vibrancy of dusk-glowing bluebells, summer hairstreak butterflies and early rowan berries, the scent of damp earth, young nettles and bramble, the taste of hawthorn bud and blackberry and the call of Tawny Owls and the Nightjar.

Anyone walking through a woodland enters the world of 'is'. We are awakened to something intrinsically part of the fabric of who we have always been, as human beings, from the dawn of time. It is from this nurturing cradle of the natural world that we can ‘remember’ how to connect and reach out as an infant to a loving parent.

©️ Victoria Bushell

Isn't life all about making connections? For as infants, it is our connectivity to the world around us and those complex organisms we call 'people' that shape our brains, equipping us for life. Every time we reach out and touch, we awaken the billions of neurons… those potential powerhouses of information floating around, just behind our foreheads, like microscopic seeds and each one having the capacity to grow the ‘roots and shoots’ of neural pathways which connect together like a neural ‘eco-system’…and connect, they do!

As with any connective and communicative system, our environment makes itself known by how it feels, looks, tastes, smells and is heard. Our capacity to consciously reach out and connect to the rhythm and flow which permeates all that has being, engages all our senses, connects us to the earth, to each other and ultimately to ourselves…and brings together body and mind working in functional unity.

And here is the grief...Like a felled tree, the severance of our natural world, hewn to a ragstone void or newly encased in concrete, bitumen and gravel, disconnects us from that which sustains us. It is tantamount to trauma.

©️ Rachel Rodwell

So what can we do?

As Joni Mitchell once sung "we've got to get ourselves back to the garden" and like dispersed seeds, which never consciously 'know' what they will grow into, the joy will be in the becoming. In the good earth, we become rooted, connected, invested and determined in our resolve to grow something sustainable and new. It takes intent to implement a change and I guess that pain we are feeling of yet another woodland under threat, is nature's way of telling us that it's time to fight... to say 'enough', to say 'no!!'.

It is also our time to heal...and we all can, in those small acts of kindness nurtured in our window boxes, gardens, woodlands, meadows and open spaces and also to each other, within the communities where we live, 'grow and have our being'."

Oaken Wood

Help Save Oaken Wood

Oaken Wood is under threat. Proposals to allocate Oaken Wood as a hard rock quarrying site will result in the loss of at least 41 hectares of Ancient Woodland. But you can help - the public consultation is open now.

Learn more