Along the quaint country pathways, past the village post office and Victorian brick cottages with sash windows dressed with the season’s blooms, you come to a field. Today the field lays bare, earth tilled and seeds freshly sown. You enter the field where the country walking path is marked and clamber over a wooden kissing gate. Either side of the gate meets with wooden fences that are entangled with the hedgerows. Amidst the hedgerows the occasional rabbit can be spotted, jumping from this field to the next. Far to the distance both left and right, tall fir trees stand as soldiers might during a parade – solemn in their salute. Across from you is a small ancient woodland where in a few weeks time bluebells will erupt in visual song, their vibrant colours a cause for chorus from the many songbirds. But as with every other time you have climbed into this field, you have eyes for one thing only – the old oak tree.

It has been standing there since the dawn of time, sentinel in the middle of the field. Despite its grandeur there is something modest about it, especially during the winter months when it lays bare. But today it is spring and as the promise of new leaves begin to form, it reminds you that with its annual rebirth there is no limit. Time and time again it will follow its cycle: orange-brown buds amplifying into shades of gold and green as it flourishes into its high fashion of leafy couture, then begins to redden and brown, shaking itself free from its bonds and finally laying bare once more.

For you, the tree is more than a tree. It is the place you come to witness the passing of time when it feels like you’re stuck in bleak eternity. Day by day the tree – and the land it stands within – continues to change and you know that somewhere inside you’re changing too.

Some people read books, but you’re always reading the land. And the land makes promises to you. Even when there is a storm in the sky and the rain lashes down so that your sorrow is indivisible from the nature that surrounds you, you have walked the land and around this tree long enough to know that with time the buds will come once more and promise you a new beginning.

You walk to the old oak tree and sit beneath it for a while. You lie with your back to its trunk, your hands upon the root flare – its bark rough and alive with soft lichen. You sense the life within the tree. It seems steady and unmoving, but with the gentle breeze it is always slowly dancing. You look up through its branches to the heavens, and you pray. You ask for your freedom and you dream for the day to come when you’re strong enough to walk away.

That day was many days, seasons, and years ago now. You don’t remember exactly when it was the last time, just that it was spring. But the day came when you never walked that field again. You never gazed upon your tree one last time. All those moments you had admired it and sat beneath its canopy, it had lent you strength and enough life that your wish was finally granted. You crossed back over the kissing gate, past the Victorian cottages with their sash windows dressed with the season’s blooms, back past the village post office, and back along the quaint country pathways. And you never looked back.