Rising from the Ash’s
Once walking one of my familiar paths in Gower, that sacred peninsula rich with myth and memory, I was stopped in my tracks by a scene that stirred deep sorrow: the culling of a grove of mountain ash trees.
The hum of chainsaws echoed across the field, where once only the wind and birdsong had filled the air. Branches lay strewn across the ground, their once-feathered leaves now motionless. I felt it not just as a loss of trees but a breaking of something ancient. The mountain ash, or rowan, is no ordinary tree. In Welsh tradition, it's deeply sacred, a guardian against ill-will, a tree of protection and spirit. Known as criafolen in Welsh, its very name speaks to its gentle, weeping form. It has stood in our folklore as a protector of thresholds, sacred groves and liminal spaces.
Compelled, I approached the worker who had just felled another one. With care, I asked why. His response was quiet, almost reverent. "They're diseased. Ash dieback. They're too far gone." His voice carried the weight of responsibility, of protecting the forest from greater harm.
Ash dieback, or Hymenoscyphus fraxineus, is a fungal blight that has devastated trees across the UK and Europe, particularly the mountain ash and common ash. In Wales, where these trees have marked paths, ridgelines and sacred sites for millennia, the loss is not just ecological, it is spiritual. These trees, once woven into healing lore and druidic tradition, are now vulnerable, their immune systems no match for the aggressive spores carried on the wind.
I left the site that day with a heavy heart, mourning the quiet sentinels who had guarded those moors for generations.
And yet nature and the human spirit, have a way of renewing.
When I returned a few weeks later, I saw something extraordinary.
From the remaining trunks and stumps, where once limbs had stretched skyward, art had begun to emerge. An unknown artist had arrived, working quietly with chisel and blade, shaping images from the leftover wood. There were spirals, birds mid-flight, bear and my favourite a wise owl perched on books. Each carving felt like a prayer, a song coaxed from the brokenness. The sadness in my chest lifted slightly.
What had been a space of mourning was now a space of transformation.
In the face of ecological loss, there was creativity. In the wake of destruction, something meaningful was being born.
Perhaps that is the message of the mountain ash: that in vulnerability there is also resilience. That protection sometimes means letting go. And that sacredness isn’t lost when something dies but may reappear, quietly, in the hands of those who choose to honour what remains.
So I walk that path now with a different awareness. I still miss the trees. But I also bow my head to the beauty growing from their absence.
And I give thanks— or the ash, for the artist and for the quiet wisdom of the land that keeps teaching us how to begin again.
