Mandy Haggith > Quotes

“One of the most astounding places elms grow is on Canna, a remote Hebridean island with a valuable safe harbour for sailors (my summer obsession). There is nothing to the south-west of Canna except a few thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean, and that's the prevailing wind direction, scouring the island with salt-laden rain and gales. Yet here I find a craggy slope swathed in elms, sculpted by the wind into wedges, repeatedly clipped to the distinctive wind-raked shape of the slope. In mid-July, the trees were in full leaf and thriving, and underneath the triangular canopy the ancient trunks were chunky and strong. They must have been hunkering there in the teeth of the wind for centuries. Here was a perfect example of elm's toughness and ability to survive the ravages of severe weather.”
― Mandy Haggith, The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees – and the Fight to Save Them

“Between the disappearance of the river and its re-emegence is like a desert river valley, clearly carved by water, with rounded stones in the bottom and steep sides, but no water running. Yet here there are elm trees, one of which is huge, with a magnificent trunk festooned with mosses, lichens, polypody ferns and fungi, a rich tapestry of rainforest life. Uniquely, it grows horizontally out of the rock, many metres up the sheer wall of the ravine, a completely implausible place for a tree to grow, hanging in complete defiance of the laws of physics.

I stand beneath it, neck craned in awe, looking up into the lush green profusion of its living community. It is winter, so all this greenery isn't the tree's own leaves, but photosynthesising life using it as a climbing frame. Paradoxically, in this dry river valley, everything about its grand gathering of epiphytes declares it to be a rainforest tree. It is a perfect synbol of survival against the odds.”
― Mandy Haggith, The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees – and the Fight to Save Them

“Along with the rest of the environmental movement, I used the expression 'climate emergency', but over the past year of elm-watching, I've realised emergencies are events that require immediate, drastic, high-paced intervention, designed to bring the situation to an end. Climate action just isn't like that and I no longer believe the emergency metaphor is helpful: it implies that the problem will be short-lived, that experts will be able to handle it and that we should be in a state of heightened emotion, in 'fight-or-flight' mode, until help arrives. It makes many people so upset that they're understandably immobilised or frozen with fear, or too distressed to be rational. In reality we all need to engage deeply and long term, in cool, life-affirming ways. I believe recovery or healing is a better way of thinking about the issue: getting off our fossil fuel addiction, restoring our damaged relationship with the rest of the natural world and trasforming to healthier ways of being.”
― Mandy Haggith, The Lost Elms: A Love Letter to Our Vanished Trees – and the Fight to Save Them