London Horcrux #6: Blue Trees

In London, not too far from St. Paul’s, there is a gathering of blue trees. I first saw them on my way to the Tate Modern, and I knew I had to go back and investigate: why are the trees blue? This brought to my mind a resurgence of childhood wonder, remembering the iconic childhood question, “Why is the sky blue?” I thought of some parallel world in which the sky is green and the trees are blue, and everything we know to be true here is something else there. Or perhaps some fantasy universe where everything exists in bright happy colours and there is no expectation that trees have brown trunks and green leaves. I had a feeling that these trees were painted, but what if there truly was some rare species of tree that grew blue? These trees are a horcrux to me because of the childhood wonder they gave me, reminding me again of my love of the pursuit of knowledge, and to question that which is thought to be certain.

Why are the trees blue?

When I finally did return, I discovered that the trees are in fact painted as an environmental awareness exhibition. This gave me mixed feelings. I was at once disappointed that they were not some marvellous species of blue tree, worried that the paint would deprive the tree of needed oxygen and possibly scare off or kill wildlife drawn to trees, and impressed with so simple an idea to bring awareness to a worthy cause, for I cannot be the only one who wondered why the tree s are blue.  Many people simply walk past trees without a second thought, but these trees are not simply walked past. In an age when nature is being demolished in favour of human desires, people need reminding that the environment is important and that we cannot survive without natural elements such as trees.

Explanation.

These trees are thus fantastic in nature because blue trees are an oddity in normal Earth. They are also folkloric, because I can see down the line stories being told of “those blue trees in London,” and also because such awareness techniques are designed to get people thinking and talking about them, and things that travel by word of mouth become the stuff of folklore.