All of us have likely seen the Spectre Tree at one time or another. Some of us often, others rarely, there are those who make the claim they have never seen it and doubt that it exists.

Those who have seen it can never agree upon what it looks like. Some say it possesses tentacles in place of leaves or contains whole cities in its boughs, others say it is a road that runs horizontal to the ground and stretches on for miles.

One man witnessed a series of spiralling galaxies that contained whole solar systems circling above the branches. A woman once thought she saw the highly plumed tails of many pink birds until she changed her mind and decided there was only one bird, gigantic in size who possessed feathers that sprouted out in short, rounded tufts.  In the early Twentieth Century, twins, from New Orleans, saw a pair of woman’s legs that sprouted talking mouths with lips a-frenzy, from the knees. A Norwegian Sea Captain spoke of always seeing the visage of a stricken old man full of urgent, voiceless, pleas who would turn into a Tuna fish, out of sheer frustration it seemed, for the Captain could never hear what the old man was trying to tell him. Perhaps, for whatever reason, he did not want to listen.

The Spectre is usually visible if you look into the distance, into the shadows, or out on a pale grey winter’s morning when the sun’s light cannot penetrate the low cloud. No one has ever reached it, no matter how determined they are, certainly, no one has ever touched it. Some say the vision must be a kind of message from a mirror world, proof of the existence of an invisible barrier between realms. Others have questioned this notion, asserting that as the tree does not mark a place that anyone can travel too. It cannot be a thing at all.

It is a figment, a figment ... and yet - and yet ... The tree is visible. It is always visible if you look for it, at dusk, in the evening, as the balmy summer sun lacquers the dry fields in a golden wash, it is somehow always visible when we need it to be. No doubt the tree is more glorious in its true form then we can ever fully comprehend.

I have seen the tree but twice in my life, the first, it looked like an ordinary tree, a fine old English Oak, solid and sure, beautiful, glorious, abundant ... and the second ... there was nothing ... nothing visible in the space where it stood. It had vanished, emptied the world of itself and I was confronted with my truths, the folly of my delusions, the sight of the church upon the hill, the bell, faintly chiming time, the graveyard, it left me alone and I knew everything had changed.         

By Robyn Hunt (c) 2020