Page 81 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #12

Behind
the
image

Growing out

of the ashes

by JOAKIM BERGLUND 2005

As Sweden picked up the pieces in the
months following its worst-ever storm,
an oak tree appeared on the landscape.

he world was still recovering
from the shock of the Boxing
Day Tsunami when Cyclone
Gudrun hurtled through
T southern Sweden (and
Denmark) on 8 January 2005. It was
JOAKIM BERGLUND the worst storm the country had known,
Joakim is a freelance
pulling roofs off houses, tearing down
photographer who
specialises in aerial phone masts and ravaging the landscape.
imagery. airpictures.se The spruce pines that characterise the
region’s forests didn’t stand a chance
against Gudrun, whose 165kmph
gusts ripped out their shallow roots
and snapped their trunks in half “like
matchsticks”. In five hours, 75 million
3
m of forest was felled, plunging its
owners into financial ruin and creating
a timber stockpile so enormous that it
became something of a tourist attraction.

Calm after the storm
Six months after the event, flying above
the area in a Cessna aircraft to cover a
crime story for a national newspaper,
Joakim spotted a pattern resembling a
vast oak tree carved out of the greenery
below. “I was approaching from the
west, so the tree appeared ‘standing
up’,” he recalls. “Seeing such a strong,
clear shape amid the spruce pines was
incredible. I remember thinking, what
the heck is that and who made it?!”
Gudrun had bashed out the shape of
the canopy; foresters using machinery
and vehicles to clear the fallen debris
then filled in the detail, creating a
poignant symbol only visible from the
air. “The image is a reminder that we
are likely to face increasingly strong
winds and storms as a result of global
warming, and also of the consequences
of planting fast-growing species such
as pine on land not intended for them,”
says Joakim. “This image was shaped
by nature itself, as if Earth was telling
us to slow down and refocus.”
Today, saplings have filled the empty
land; a ghostly trace is all that remains of
the tree that emerged from the storm.

December 2018 BBC Wildlife 81