This is a tree that slowly died, swamped by polluted water. The reed-beds laid, the water culverted away, this tree and only this one returned to life.

It came back inch by inch, a smaller thing, dwarfed by the tall whitening skeleton of its former life. It put forth tentative asymmetric shoots and began to thicken in foliage, misshapen but alive. The people who pass this way take pictures of its gnarling form, outlined against the dawn or evening sky. They call it the Scary Tree, as though its upward-reaching deadwood were an imprecation, not a prayer.

But not everything that comes back to life is a phantom or a zombie. Sometimes it’s a phoenix or a miracle or a message from the other side of everywhere. Or an oak tree. This is what oak trees do. They live slowly, the last in spring to open their leaves and the last to reach full height, and nowhere near the tallest even then. They are last, too, to surrender in difficult times.

More strong than beautiful, oaks stand their ground and hold together half our history beside them. It was oak that fed communities of mediaeval swineherds, built towns, won wars at sea. In future centuries, when all this is forgotten, we will still retain—I hope—an affinity with oak. The scary tree. Ungainly, undead—but undefeated.