A Tree Change Tale

Our flat in the city had a small square window looking out into the branches of a tall eucalyptus tree. Lying on the mattress on the concrete floor of our apartment with the window pushed open, I could hear wind rustling through the leaves even as traffic passed and people shouted in the street below. Its branches filled the frame like a painting.
The old tree was growing in a tiny empty lot; a rare thing in our neck of the woods. The lot was fenced off, and judging by the rate that the skyline was growing, I guessed it had long since been sold and was awaiting development. After living in the city for two years, I suspected that the tree was reaching the end of its lifespan. I told my partner that when the tree was gone, so was I.
The tree came down. I happened to be driving into my garage past the little lot when the chainsaw went quiet. After a moment of suspension, the great trunk collided with the earth, and I felt the ground shake.
I never truly hated living in the city, but this was a last straw moment for me. Our apartment was many wonderful things but it had no garden or balcony. I liked looking down at the empty lot with its long grass straggling through litter, fig tree full of lorikeets in the daytime, bats by night. Lying on the bed in the sunlight with the eucalyptus leaves waving in the breeze beside me.
When the tree was gone I could see into my neighbours’ windows for the first time. It felt uncomfortably close. Through the other windows we could see a supermarket car park, and the night was filled with the sounds of car alarms, people shouting, and the constant buzzing of a commercial fan in the neighbouring building.
We moved to the country. It’s not an unusual thing to do, unless you’re in your early twenties, as we are. In this part of the world, almost everyone our age lives in the city. Australia is divided into country and city more acutely than the UK, where I grew up, where you’re never far from a major town. But it’s also something that’s happening all over the world; young people leaving the country behind as soon as they turn eighteen.
People often ask me how I make any friends here, and whether I’m lonely. Actually, I have never been more lonely than the first few months after I moved to Melbourne. I grew up in a rural area of northern England and went to university in a small town in Scotland. Now I found myself living in one of the most densely populated parts of Melbourne, right next door to a supermarket. I could see hundreds of people from my window every day and I didn’t know one of them. I was surrounded by people and I felt like I didn’t have any friends.
Ultimately I made friends the same way there that I have here. I went out and did things. I started studying, I got a job, I went to events. I only once made friends with someone completely spontaneously in the queue at the Post Office because she happened to like the owl on my bag, but such instances are always rare.
When we moved, I was on first name terms with the woman who runs our local Post Office within a couple of weeks. Again, I found work, started volunteering, and recently I joined a sports club. Meeting people here is no harder than it is in an inner-city suburb; they just may not be in the same age bracket as you. Maybe you’ll find that your experiences are broadening as a result, as mine are.
Others have expressed concern that I must get bored during the long, dark nights of winter, without the city lights to play with my circadian rhythms. The ways in which I spend my time have hardly changed at all, although it is no longer an hour and a half round-trip to see my horse. I work, I study, I walk, I write, I read, I look after my animals as I have always done (only now I have the space for even more animals!). Maybe there is less time wasted in between, waiting for trams, hanging around between meetings.
If anything, I have slowed down. I give myself more time to read; I sleep on decisions before I make them. I no longer hear the relentless motion of the city outside my window, the never-ending rush to and from work. I think that constant chugging away worked its way into my head and made me feel that every moment needed to be productive. Now I allow myself time to do nothing productive at all. Some of the hurry has left my bones.
I’m lucky; my interests align with the practicalities of living in an area like this. I work with animals, and there are plenty of those around. I write, and I have everything I need for that. But I wonder whether we are on the brink of change. So many of the people who travel into the inner city to work spend their days at their computers. Many more of us are developing our own businesses and working from home. The idea of work is becoming detached from a specific location. What’s to stop other young people (and indeed people of any age) in computer-based jobs from working remotely from any part of the state, or the world?
Stepping away from the hub doesn’t mean disengaging. I try sometimes to do the same thing with my social media use that I am doing with my life: to take a step back so that I can see the bigger picture more clearly. To disconnect so that I can then connect more purposefully. And in this age of connectedness, moving away from the epicentre doesn’t mean you aren’t still involved. The power to create meaningful social and environmental change is still as much in your grip as it ever was, though how you use it may differ.
There is much about the city that I do miss. The food, the energy, the connectedness, the cultural and linguistic diversity. Many of those things exist here in smaller ways, and are perhaps more valued when I do encounter them. I believe that the diversity of this area will continue to grow. But there is much here that speaks to my soul. I don’t need a window looking out onto a tree any more; I live on the edge of a forest.
