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Appearing & Disappearing Trees

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Some years ago I read a wonderful article in the Guardian (respectable UK newspaper) about trees which seem to be sometimes there and sometimes not.

There was a country house called something like 'The Pines' which had fine, mature trees beside its front gate, which were on some photos and not on others. I also remember the landmark trees at a crossroads which were described in a guidebook and seen regularly by the writer, only to be suddenly not there when he/she returned from a stay abroad: nobody local remembered them!

I wish I'd cut out the article. I don't remember the writer's name, only that of the illustrator, Sharon Finmark, who Google tells me is a well-established artist.

Does anyone have the faintest idea what I'm talking about?
 
Once UrbanDruid the british isles, if not much of the world, was covered with forest. Mayby these are the ghosts of trees, haunting their former groves.

Niles "I see dead trees" Calder
 
Now this is very weird, I live near Epping forest, I frequently travel up north and use the M11 motorway, there is a layby just before you join the motorway which is on the edge of the forest, I often stop there for a breather before the long haul, there was a young Oak tree, I would say about ten years old by the side of the road, but on my last trip about three weeks ago it was gone, at first I thought it had been cut down so I got out of the car to have a closer look, there was no sign of it ever having been there and brambles were growing over the place where it was .
 
p.younger, that's EXACTLY the type of tree disappearance I've heard about.

Eventually, so the theory goes, your oak tree will re-appear just as before! Let us know when it does!
 
I also read the article urban druid. the Guardian archive theyr articles on there web site i will run a search for it later on and see what comes of it. i would also like to see if superdorks tree re appears.
 
Ents

Reminds me of the disappearing restaurants told of by many travelers. Almost always turns out to have been a memory flaw, but who knows?
 
This disapearing trees thing-
I don't know, highways and roadways all look so similar after a while. How can you be so sure that you haven't mistaken a place that looked like some other place that DID happen to have a tree?
 
An Unncecessarily Convoluted Theory

Or it could even be our memories momentarilly leaping with wild abandon through the interdimensional multiverse, leaving us baffled as others of us -- other Us's, as it were -- temporarily borrow the memory of the tree, or what ever else is/isn't there...
 
Does anyone have the faintest idea what I'm talking about?

YES! I read a similar (perhaps identical??) piece some years ago - though I thought it was in FT - (maybe a letter??) It concerned a guy who worked with trees in some capacity who'd found that some trees he'd recorded had apparently vanished without trace, and other locations had prominent trees that he'd not seen before. It was very convincing and very, very, very wierd, as apart from total hoax or psychosis there appeared to be no possible explanation.

But of course I can't give a reference...................
 
And yet the country is full of places where, like the Magical Place above the Hundred Acre Wood, local stories record that it is impossible to count the trees.

Perhaps they are on to something.
 
Psychology Rampant

I suspect that saying it's impossible to count the trees is a kind of bar bet based on programming a person for failure, same as betting a fellow he can't type his name in ten seconds wihtout making a mistake.
 
Wintermute- Yes, the article was indeed by someone whose job involved charting the positions of trees somehow.

It ended with him noticing that a group of fine mature trees had vanished without trace, and feeling confident that they would re-appear sometime.

I really do wish I'd kept it. But the kitty litter tray was calling........
 
Vanishing trees

There was an article in FT about this two or three years ago, but cant be bothered to find which one.
 
The annals of piffle contain a tale about a phantom lake with a
sword in a stone in its centre. It was found in or around 1952 near
Beaulieu Abbey in the New Forest by one John Swain of Ilminster,
Somerset. He and his family found this supposed memorial to King
Arthur when exploring country lanes on a picnic trip.

For seventeen years afterwards they made over 250 trips back into
the area to refind it. Reference books and guides had no such
memorial listed. A newspaper article was published in 1969 to
celebrate their 250th attempt. ( The phrase "Get a Life!" springs
to the last vestiges of any unreconstructed Fortean mind I have left. )

For all I know, they may still be trying.

The source is Phenomena by Michell & Rickard. They have a facsimile
of the article but the paper is not identified. :rolleyes:
 
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In or Out, Young Man?

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock is perfect for this thread, being about a woods far vaster inside than out, and the mythagos that dwell there, awaiting us always.
 
Mythago Wood

Did he write any other books along the same lines?, damn good book.
 
Holdstock's Freehold in Stock

Yes, Robert Holdstock followed up Mythago Wood with Lavondysse, The Hollowing (a.k.a. The Fetch), The Bone Forest, Gates of Ivory Gates of Horn, and Ancient Echoes. There may be others, I'm not sure.

His work is recommended especially to Forteans, who'll appreciate his mix of myth, dream, and reality to rival anything Jung or Charles Fort imagined.
 
Unfortunately most of the Mythago cycle are currently out of print, but you should be able to find "mythago wood" fairly easily second hand. I believe they are due for a reprint sometime soon. The only one which seems to be currently around new is his most recent one, "Celtika" which is his take on the Merlin/Jason and the Argonauts/Celtic raid on delphi set of stories, it is good but it doesn't make a very good introduction to his world.

I believe that The Fetch was printed in america as "ancient echoes" or something like that- the Hollowing is a different book.

Top author- very highly recommended.
 
Not quite as mysterious but holds a bit of a mystery for me

Some years back, after one of the freak storms that swept across Britain, a very large tree near to where I live was toppled. This tree must have been at least 30 feet high, had a huge canopy and must have also had quite an extensive root system. Unfortunately I can't remember the species. It may have been a Maple. It was a real beauty anyway. In due course it was cleared away as were other trees that were damaged to the extent that they were no longer safe. However the strange thing about this particular tree was that it was removed in such a way as to remove any trace of it ever having being there! I used to pass this tree every day. I still pass the same spot now. Not a twig or leaf was left behind. The ground was perfectly covered with grass that looked the same as the grass growing several metres away. If the root ball had been removed, the hole must have been so perfectly filled that no subsidence has occured to this day. I saw the tree when it was standing and when it had fallen (I saw the roots!). When it was taken away it was as though a large mature tree had never stood on that site.
To me this has always been a little bizarre. There wasn't any sign of any ground disturbance, either by the tree or by people removing the tree. Any thoughts or am I reading too much into this?
 
Re: Not quite as mysterious but holds a bit of a mystery for

Mana said:
When it was taken away it was as though a large mature tree had never stood on that site.
To me this has always been a little bizarre. There wasn't any sign of any ground disturbance, either by the tree or by people removing the tree. Any thoughts or am I reading too much into this?

Sounds reasonable to me Mana....

About ten years ago, a tree over the road from us, fell in a gale & within a few minutes, while the storm was still raging several people turned up in pick up trucks, cut up the tree, loaded it on the trucks & drove away!!!!!

Much later, we discovered that someone had seen it fall & knew somone with a wood burning stove, who was running short of logs etc....

Within a few days, the root hole began to be filled with rubble & garden compost & within a few weeks was totally backfilled.

Like your tree, it's as if it had never existed & without the presence of the pick up trucks & chain saws, I might have half considered the woods men (& women) to have had a supernatural origin, there was somthing almost elimental about their presence & frantic work, during a storm!!!!
 
There was a huge monkey puzzle tree at our local park on which all the kids played happily. One day I fell out of it on my face and broke my nose. (I went home in great pain and was punished for climbing- I was a girl, you see!)

As I wasn't taken to a doctor, and the broken nose only became apparent after some appalling facial swelling went down, nobody outside my friends and family knew about this accident. But I was certain it was my fault when I heard that the tree had been cut down some weeks later, and when I could bring myself to visit the spot, there was no trace at all of it.

I sometimes walk past and still miss that tree.
 
A Thing as Lovely as a Tree

escargot - It wasn't your fault, of course, although I suppose an over-reaction to safety considerations may have been sparked by your fall and injury. To my thinking, climbing trees is a healthy, fun activity all kids should have. And the ban against girls climbing trees stems only from idiot prudes who knew they'd be able to see up skirts, and didn't trust their pedophilic impulse restraints.
 
VANDALISM!!!!!!!

Quoted by Escargot
There was a huge monkey puzzle tree at our local park. One day I fell out of it on my face and broke my nose. ...I was certain it was my fault when I heard that the tree had been cut down some weeks later, and when I could bring myself to visit the spot, there was no trace at all of it.

I know this is off-thread but I was saddened to read this. It was totally unnecessary if this was the reason. All they had to do was lop off the lower branches. I love monkey puzzles. I was very privileged to be able to visit Chile where thousands of specimens of this primitive but obviously succesful species grow wild on the slopes of the southern volcanoes. Parts of the BBC's 'Walking With Dinosaurs' were filmed there. They only grow a few millimetres a year. It's a crying shame what happened to your MP. We have a very mature monkey puzzle in my home town. Its between 30-40 feet tall with an umbrella-like canopy.
 
[Adding to list of Monkey puzzle trees...]

There was one in St Ishmaels, Dyfed (Wales) in the early 80s.

(I thought you'd like to know that.)
 
When I lived in Wales I used to go for long walks in a forest about a mile or so from where I lived. It was more a small wood than a forest but I liked it:) There was a particular area I liked where I used to sit away from the track. It was flooded with a carpet of bluebells and was very pretty. One day in spring I went as usual but with my boyfriend to show him my spot. I had been many times and knew the area well but I could not find the opening in the undergrowth. The trees seemed much older and bigger and it was heavily overgrown. We went away but returned a few days later. It was the wood I knew and the opening was not hard to find and the little spot covered with bluebells was there as it as been before. As I walked through the opening I realised why I had not been able to spot it the time before. The little bent sapling next to the opening had been a huge old oak that had covered the gap. One day it had been there and a few days later gone again. I still want to see that mature old forest again but that day with my boyfriend was just a peek and I never saw it again.

P.S I read Robert Holdstocks Mythago Wood after this incident and I now like to think I stepped into a primal forest or an echo of a future one :) (I also like Charles De Lints work he also mentions the echoes of ancient forests )
 
Another interesting book about appearing and disappearing things, at least in part, is, of all things, The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel. He would classify this along with other pranks pulled by what he often refers to as the superspectrum.

It's not as silly as it sounds, in fact, and makes a lot of sense. Basicallly it's our response to encounters with the Unknown, and possibly Unknowable, Other Intelligences.
 
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