On the 27th of October 2018, sometime just after midday, alongside a hardy gang of Treesponsibility volunteers below a reservoir just outside Todmorden, I plant my first tree.
It was also my first time photographing a live tree planting event. I had photographed a completed tree-planting site in June of that year as part of the set of photos Dongria Kondh wanted for the Source booklet; a pamphlet produced in partnership with Natural Flood Management specialists Slow The Flow. I must have caught some incurable treevangelical-virus that day because here I was, on a sub-45-degree slope in the rain, juggling my camera lenses – and planting trees.
And I was having quite a good time doing it, as it turned out. And I would go back repeatedly to do it again.
There was always food, hot drinks, and biscuits. That was the secret.
It was not worth staying out at the pub too late on a Friday night, because if I got up the next day in time to plant trees, there would be some bread, a hot bowl of stew, tea and biscuits coming my way. Possibly even a pint with new friends at the end of it all.
And don’t get this wrong; I wasn’t starving. Though, with nearly a decade’s hindsight, maybe I had been aching for the sort of companionship you get from tree planting – though I didn’t know that at the time. What I did know I needed was wholesome company and a sense of purpose at a particularly grievous time in my life.
To that extent, I owe Treesponsibility, and particularly Dongria, Nagakushla and Jim, a deep gratitude; for mind-expanding conversations and on-the-nose planting-technique explanations.
The following year, I plant a tree on the reservoir above the slopes in these photos, specifically dedicated to my mum, Kim Brasington, who had shed her mortal coil in August that year.
With thanks always, Daisy B.