Image with kind permission from Jack
Aging Beneath the Tall Trees
There are men in the publick area behind my back garden today, surgeons of a sort, though not the kind who work in hospitals. They are tree surgeons, roped and harnessed, inching their way up the trunks of giants that have stood for decades. Like Long John Silver’s parrot in Treasure Island , these trees have seen a bit of history; they have lived through the death of Diana, the birth of my children, and several UK governments.
This is Jack eighty feet above the earth he climbs with a calm confidence born of experience. I watch him from below, feeling that odd mix of admiration and unease that has crept up on me as the years accumulate.
Their movements stir old memories. I think back to my younger days in Norway, the late nineties, when I did not hesitate to abseil from heights like these. A tall building felt less like a risk and more like a challenge. I remember one scorching summer when I decided to finish a job after sundown. I was using a cherry picker on this occasion, and halfway up it seized on me. With no mobile phone and no one around, I had to dreep doon, as we say in Glasgow, and hope the soft bushes below would break my fall. There was a freedom in those days, a nimbleness that let me dance with the high places of the world.
But now the very thought of being that far off the ground sends a shiver through me. It is a ridiculous, involuntary quiver, like a startled pup. What once felt natural now feels foreign, and I marvel at how quietly that change arrived. It is not just physical. It is something deeper, something the wise King Solomon understood about aging long before any of us drew breath.
“And they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way…”
Ecclesiastes 12:5 (NKJV).
The words ring true in a way they never did when I was young. He was not only speaking of heights, but of the way age reshapes our relationship with the world. The body loosens its grip. Balance becomes a negotiation instead of a reflex. Even small tasks stretch themselves into challenges. What once towered with possibility now looms with caution.
And yet there is a quiet dignity in recognising this shift. It is not defeat. It is honesty. There is wisdom in seeing life from the ground, in understanding that the vantage point of youth is not the only way to witness the world. The men in the trees have their season, just as I had mine. Now I stand below, rooted rather than reaching, and there is something steadying in that.
As I watch them work, I feel no envy. Only a gentle ache for the past and a calm respect for the present. The trees will come down, as all tall things eventually do. Life changes, and so do we. But there is still beauty in witnessing the heights, even if only from the earth.
Five decades ground to dust
Note: Dreep from the Proto-Germanic dreupanan, meaning to drip, drop, or trickle down.