TODAY I FOUND MY TREE

I first drove to Adelaide to see my girl friend at Easter in 1965. We had met on a band trip a few years earlier, so I passed my driver’s licence, bought a beat up old 1948 series Holden and knew independence and freedom like never before. The world was mine and a 12 hour trip, overnight to see the love of my life; was not a problem. I can count the years since I first did the trip but have lost count of the number of times that I have actually ‘done the drive’.

Somewhere on one of those earlier trips I saw a tree that I just had to take a picture of. A tree had fallen over in a storm and only a small portion of its root system stayed in the ground; but it was still growing. Many years ago I used it as an illustration of the power that we all have to overcome adversity. A lot of vegetation comes and goes over the years and in more recent years I lost track of the real tree. I did have a photograph; you know one of those old fashioned ones that you had to take to a developing place and they developed these long flat bits of plastic and magically a picture appeared, and I occasionally found it when packing up, deciding what to throw out and what to keep, I always kept the photograph but every time I passed where I thought the real tree was I could not find it.

I cannot express my excitement 43 years after that first trip, on a beautiful day for driving as I was thinking about it and wondering if it had found its way to a fireplace, there it was just west of the Conconjella Bridge on the Adelaide side of Ararat. Would you think less of me if I told you that I got really excited and when it was safe to do so did a U turn to go back and have a look and yes this is the picture I took just a few weeks ago. After all these years it is still growing, new shoots and leaves and looking very healthy, even though it is lying down rather than standing up straight and tall not like most of all the others.

For me, being an avid reader of this blog and seeing, and feeling the great pain of so many of my former colleagues, that in a sense reached a hiatus with the recent article on ‘Get Over it’, and then all the responses that referred to Jungian theory, and his possibly severe way of dealing with people who were stuck in their pain. Yes in our situation we need to identify with those in pain and sometimes just sit with them, but there does come a time when despite all that has happened the realisation comes that ‘Life does indeed, go on’. In his landmark book on the psychology of love M. Scott Peck starts with just three words: “Life is Difficult”, he then goes on to say that when we fully understand that, and accept it, we can then begin to put the whole of our life into context.

This picture of ‘My tree’, is eventually going to be a poster above my desk and when I see it I will always know that no matter how small my grip within my heritage is I can still grow and flourish, and be a place where the birds of the air can come and nest. Knowing my hairstyle, that’s metaphorical rather than literal. I might look a little bit different to all the other trees but I am just as healthy and playing my part in the landscape of life.

Fletch
Peter Fletcher
Former
Australia
Peter Fletcher