All through winter, the trees stand bare: tall and proud and unashamed of their perennial nakedness. They wait patiently, while the winds blow and the soft rain produces a damp atmosphere that fosters a covering of damp, dark green moss. At times the snow covers their branches with a sprinkling of pure white.

At last, every year, as a reward for their patience it seems, tiny buds begin to unfurl; their protective coverings drop to the ground and are borne away on the breeze. Another spring is born. These tiny leaves develop into glorious, brand new, fresh green foliage. They mature and grow, turn a deeper, darker shade of green and stretch up towards the light, basking in the rays of the summer sun. The woodlands thicken, become dense and overgrown. They provide shelter for nesting birds and shade for weary passers-by. A vast array of fruits, nuts, vegetables and grain appear in our fields and orchards. They ripen in the sunshine and the summer rain. We share them, willingly or otherwise, with birds, mice, wasps, butterflies and a host of other creatures and, every year, we gather in the harvest.

Late in the summer, the leaves dry out and turn colour. They fall to the ground, making a rich multi-coloured carpet of golds, reds and browns. In the city streets, they are swept up by armies of municipal workers, armed with brooms, shovels and little trucks or by means of noisy, leaf-blowing or wood-crunching monsters. In the countryside, the leaves gather in corners and under hedges, blown into drifts by the autumn gales, where they provide a home for hedgehogs, field mice, beetles and spiders. Finally, they rot down into a fine, nutritious mulch of dense, rich vegetable matter, nurturing the growth of next year’s plants.

Then begins again the winter waiting. The trees enter their period of rest, of trance, of recuperation: not a winter of discontent but a winter of hibernation. Sometime in the early part of the year, unseen and unheard, the sap begins to rise. Then, all of a sudden, ‘pop’ – a bud bursts forth, covered in sticky sap – then another and another and the year begins again its familiar cycle.

Over and over, again and again, nature repeats its cycle. Never bored, never hungry for change or looking for some new novelty or fresh challenge, nature follows its appointed course with mind-blowing steadiness and reliability. Why should I, then, in my 21st century humanity, as a part of this natural cycle, be fashioned so differently? After only a couple of repetitions of a simple task or at the outset of another yearly cycle, I grow weary and bored and retire defeated, exhibiting signs of repetitive strain injury! I am destined, it seems, to be eternally caught in the tension between that soothing sense of security achieved by performing a familiar task well and with ease and the brain-dead boredom of a task repeated one time too many.

Where would we be if the trees felt the same? How would life go on if the birds and animals tired so easily of their seasonal tasks of nest-building, reproduction and foraging endlessly for food to feed the next generation? What if the spring decided to do something different next March? There are lessons to be learned from the wise old trees!

Enough has been said on the subject of dealing with constant change – a subject that is much highlighted in these changing times. But when boredom sets in and we are powerless to change our lot, how should we learn to rest contented when nothing changes? How can we learn to flow with the seasonal rhythms of nature and continue to be productive and motivated day in, day out, with those same old things?

This is a question to which former generations, in less turbulent times, might have had some answers. Perhaps the fictional inhabitants of Larkrise or Candleford can give us some clues to this lost way of life? Maybe we can dimly remember stories of a time when past generations laboured on, uncomplaining, giving birth, weaning, teaching, training, nurturing ten or a dozen children in an ever-growing family. We still marvel at some who work steadily for the same firm for 50 years, from youth to retirement, culminating in a pension, the presentation of a gold watch and a sense of satisfaction in a job well done. Maybe in rural communities there are those who still understand the passing of the seasons: winter, summer, seedtime and harvest and the repetitive tasks that each season brings, year in, year out. Maybe these people know the secret and can show us how to be enduring and fulfilled in the ‘daily round, the common task’.

But this generation is partly gone and partly marginalised – ousted by a new generation who know better. They have often been made to feel that their long experience is somehow obsolete and unwanted and may be unwilling to expose their secrets to a modern workforce who have already discarded so many old things and old people in their relentless thrust forwards into the challenges of the 21st century.

So, maybe it’s time to talk to the trees and hope that the trees will listen to us and provide some answers.

Julie Duke

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