Weaving Words with Willows
In the land of 1000 willows…… knarled veterans stand guarding over the Cam. Their form shaped by the cuts of man, tongues of cattle, beetles and fungi that lace through their hollowing’s. Who is that walking slowly across the misty waterlogged common? Tis..the willows.
It seems as if anything is possible. We have emerged from the air, turning the invisible into living wood. Our lives are not fixed but shaped by circumstance and resilience – responding to our surroundings. A storm may bend a trunk without it breaking, a snapped branch may root, and a willow may walk again. Our future is unwritten, open to possibility, so that even the improbable can grow and flourish when conditions allow.
We are the willows. With our bodies of branches and bark, we notice the land and all who live here. With our leaves and stems, our roots and rhyzomes, our bodies feel and know the changes of night and day, the seasons, the years, the decades, the centuries. We recognise who grows with us, and changes the landscape with us – from our evenly lived poplar friends to our fasterpaced neighbours who bend with the wind: reeds.
I am the reeds who sway in the stream, I share this water with my poplar + willow neighbours. In times before, I may also have shared the glistening water droplets that sit proudly on the moss.
I am moss on my friend the willow, who has fallen. I cover, I protect. We collaborate to make more shelter for our other friends. During the day and night we hold each other tight, willow gives me their food unselfishly. There is quite a group of us here, in this patch. We look after each other but I know willow would rather be moving, oh willow.
We are the willows. We are the light on a winter morning, playground and home all at once. We give amazing hugs to those who venture close. We are warm and cold, hard and soft, tree sky and tree soil.
I am tree soil, I am created from leaves + fungi. I help bring new life. Other beings, insects + spiders find homes in + around me. I am part of nature.
I am nature… I can produce new generations. My roots can spread whole world. No matter where we are. I will grow new leaves, new lives, new memories. The last winter might be harsh, the last summer might be too hard, but my flowers will bloom again and again. My trees will contunitue to grow to spread their seeds that might flow through – water – .
I am the water, that life force within. I am the source the heals the bark and the skin. I am the one that travels to and fro. I am the one we all need + know. I am the colours.
I am the colours. The fresh - running water brings the colours to life.
I am forist. I am a tree. I am busid a rivu with watucres.
I am watercress of the woods. The watercress grows in the same family of the leafs.
I am wild leaf. I grow on a willow!
We are the willows. We weave and story our way through the landscape. We walk through time. As we walk, we remember. We re-member. We are time keeper, time protector.
I am the protector, spikes on thistles + stings on nettles, the armour surrounding precious seed cargo. I encircle the ancient, gnarly trunk with the branches of a fallen willow.
I am the branches of a fallen willow and allthough my tree has fallen, I will root and shoot into new trees. And then I will be a happy willow.
I am happy as a willow. They weave an grow. I am a tree.
I am a tree. Please see me. Here I stand silently as you walk by happily even if it’s just a wee. Do let even your doggie.
I am a dowsing digging doggy! I’ll take you to water when you feel thirsty! One day though, I lost my way, men covered a river with a motorway… But still I could sniff the water. It kept flowing, every one knows. And guess what? Not long later, the place was reclaimed by a row of beautiful willows.
We are the willows. We offer our gifts freely to all: home and shelter, room and board, basket and medicine, space and time, listening and glistening leaves. We offer and hold and store and share the life, the magic, the energy.
I am the energy that gives life to natures orchestra. The shimmering poplar leaves, the rustling, creaking, branches. The music for the dancing grass, the swaying mushrooms and the homes for the insects under the bark of deadwood.
I am the bark of deadwood. As a tree I have not survived, but still I live on. It was a hard transition, but now I have purpose again. I am the home of many smaller lives. I like this new version of me. I know you have a different story, you go on as before. I support you and I cheer you on from over here – it’s okay to change and grow. Decades and even centuries pass us by but we keep excisting in one form or another, you and me. I hear you, I see you, not with eyes or ears but in many mysterious ways, overground and underground, here in the land of willows.
We are the willows. We tell our stories to those who want to listen. We listen to the stories of those who want to tell us. We share our stories with the soil and sky, with passers-by, with the land and wind, the seasons and the stream.
I am the stream. I am all ways travelling. I am travelling through all the seasons and my favourite is autumn.
I am the autumn. Each year I come, some things change and other remain the same. Colder days, falling leaves, the night drawing in. I wonder what will change this next year, maybe a lot and maybe nothing.
I am nothing. I have fallen into the stream. I am sitting on this mat. I have been looking at the water. Ben is twisting.
I am twisting and twining and dancing and singing and breathing with my gills and open leaves and craggy branches climbing up and up and up and up into the great white willow.
I am the great white willow. My leaves and branches wisp in the wind and fall in curls to the autumn ground. Twisted and entangled, my leafy green companion is not immune to the clutches of the season. The autumn wind whistles as we fragment and are reborn. We are the watchers, the elders, the walking ones. We crumble and re-root. Season after season we ground ourselves and share our wisdom with those who care to listen. We are the willows.
We are the willows. We bend and grow and mend and slowly change the land with our bodies, a home to many and to ourselves. We are the place to find refuge, we are shelter and kin amidst the shapes of the wild.
I am the shapes of the wild. The vortexes and swirls of streams are mirrored in the curling of the leaves. The protection in spines and spikes for the blackthorn + the rose. The glittering stars and round whirlpools of the sunlit river.
I am the river and I flow through the countryside, towns and cities, and I like to give water to the roots of the willows.
I am the roots winding beneath your feet. Strong and important. Not always seen. I provide for the beauty in the bark.
I am the bark. All seeing protector, provider of shelter and life. Experiencing the elements through every season, adapting, evolving, expanding to encompass the life of all of the willows.
We are the willows. We are here for all ages. We are here for an age, a different shape each and every time. Every time you see us, we look like the same, yet different tree.
I am a tree. My leaves are green. I make triangles with my branches of willow.
We are the willows. Even when we are not alive, we hold so much life. When we fall, it’s only the beginning. We are home to so many who live in and on us. Fungi and lichen. Spiders and silk. And, on rare occasions, even the tree-climbing squawky legged moor hen.
I am a squawky leggy moorhen. My friends call me swamp chicken. I swim along the river seeing trees, weeds, birds & snails.
I am snail and my world is willow. She is my ground and life giver. She helps me slow down. I can still hear her answers though the questions are lost… I love willow.
We are the willows. We move and twist and grow towards the sun. We shake our leaves when winter winds come. Still looking at the sun bright in the sky, a glittering eye.
I am a glittering eye in the darkness. I am twig fingers clutching for sun beams, to catch, keep, hide in the heart of the willow.
We are the willows. We grow old by slowly walking, we grow young by growing fast. We grow roots and branches and leaves and bark.
I am the bark of the willow – I hold and stretch and crack and split and let go in a rush. As my skin cracks open, the branch twists and falls to the ground, shifting with mud, soaking with water and a new water earth being rises.
I am water earth being, willow, wren song, winter sun + air. Single magpie nearby. Willow is nest place, perch place, pollinator place, seeding catkins place, releasing fluffy seeds. Cow shade, rain shelter, rot place for beetles and fungi. Life giver, the life bringer.
I am the life bringer. I flow through the viens of leaves and branches. The willows are my very close neighbours. I follow their fine roots that intertwine with the magical mycelium in the ground.
I am the ground beneath your feet. I am the hope you can seek. I am the journey you can trust. I am the weaping willows.
We are the willows. We walk this land, growing a new, again, and again, and again. We sprout and root and grow as cracked trees and ancient stools of pollard.
I am a pollard. I grow branches for weaving. Sometimes my twigs can be turned into charcoal and be part of nature’s paint pallet.
I am nature’s paint palette, I bring vibrant fresh greens in spring, bright pinks and purples in summer, sunset reds + oranges in autumn and icy blues + whites in winter. I patiently wait for those who visit my gallery, especially the great walker.
I am the great walker, who survives when I fall. I crawl from my own wreckage, to begin again. I can do this, because this is the path that nature has carved out for me, and while swaying amongst the water and the willows.
We are the willows. We are here, always, a different shape each time. We are kept warm with blankets of moss.
I am the moss that warms the wood… that drinks the rain and brings comfort in the storm. I gratefully sink under the feet of the heron.
I am heron. I hear squirrel shout. Is there news for me? Listening – I hear a shimmering poplar leaf.
I am a shimmering poplar leaf. The sun dances through me and so does the wind, to help me wave to my ancient willow neighbours. At the end of the season, I will fall to the ground and sleep as a red leaf.
I am a red leaf. I danced in the breeze and slept on the grass and under the willows.
We are all here, in this land of a thousand willows. The old willows have been standing here, longer than our fleeting attention, alive with lessons about patience and endurance, shaped by weather and the years. Their hollowed trunks once held seasons like stories. Their limbs bent and broken, that still comb the air, breathless or grounded and walking for dear life.
So, if you are on Sheep’s Green or Coe Fen and spot some knotted ancient eyes, don’t just pass them by. Say ‘Hello in there*’.
Authors
A story woven together with the Walking Willows of Sheep’s Green, transcribed here as crafted and captured during National Tree Week 2025 on Sheep’s Green Common in Cambridge, from Tuesday 25 November until Sunday 30 November 2026, daily between 09:00 and 15:30 GMT, by Lotte Dijkstra, Cambridge City Council Biodiversity and Tree Teams, Cambridge Nature Network, Hyem Landscape, and the more-than-human citizens of Cambridge present.
* Inspired by the John Prine song of the same name.
