Description
The felling of the iconic tree on at Sycamore Gap in Northumberland, England in September 2023 was met with national and international outrage. The tree was believed to be over 300 years old and was the subject of countless paintings, photographs, and social media posts earning it the moniker of ‘most photographed tree in Britain’. The reaction to this act of vandalism went beyond expectation with locals describing the loss as akin to a wound on the soul of the community and mourners far and wide expressing similar outpourings of grief. In this paper I explore how the natural world plays into questions of ontological security. I argue that the destruction of the nature represents a violation of our sense of ‘home’. However, I also present the paradox of small-scale vandalism vs the wholesale destruction of the natural world through human-driven climate change and argue that that while climate anxiety is a rising and real concern, individuals ‘bracket out’ this concern by engaging in vicarious identification with specific actors in nature. The Sycamore Gap tree is a perfect distillation of this, as much of the media coverage has anthropomorphized the tree to such a degree that it is no longer part of the ‘natural’ world, but rather a part of the British ‘home’ and national story. Stories of what the tree ‘saw’, ‘felt’, and took part in dominated the news cycle, and it is from this media coverage that I draw the primary data for the case. In presenting this argument I also make the case for a greater integration of the natural world into our discussions on ontological security and consider the ramifications of the Anthropocene on how global challenges are addressed.
