VIEW, Issue three, 2012


Website: viewdigital.org


Dispatches from Operation Tree Mission


The Belfast Hills Partnership recently planted hundreds of trees on the Ballycolin Road, outside Belfast. Journalist Brian Pelan (below) was ‘embedded’ with the volunteers who took part in the activity


the landscape and a mist rises over the hills. The dawn assignment is under way. Crack voluntary troops, armed with spades and gloves, will not rest until hundreds of native trees are planted. Failure is not an option. I am ‘embedded’ with the unit. At an earlier briefing, one of the team queried my role after I had remarked that I would not be getting my hands dirty.


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“But surely you have to actually plant some trees to get a real sense of the occasion to report on it,” he said.


him: “That’s now how real journalism works – we are the observers,” I replied.


My tormentor laughed. This made me slightly nervous. Did he know something I didn’t?


Road, ‘Captain’ Lizzy explained the purpose of the day, which would in- clude us “pushing down hard and wig- gling it around”. She was followed by ‘Sergeant’


At our location on the Ballycolin I fixed my tired, old hack eyes on


convoy is snaking its way through the countryside as in- cessant rainfall sweeps across


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Freddie who issued safety instructions to the group. I felt my hands getting clammy and beads of sweat began to roll down my face. I'm a city boy and all this talk of ‘danger’ in the country- side was unnerving me.


trees, the other crew had to clear rubbish from the surrounding area. I’m not exactly sure how it hap-


One team was assigned to plant the


pened, but about an hour after arriv- ing at the Ballycolin Road I found myself in a field wearing a bright yel- low fluorescent jacket, with a litter picker in one hand and a large refuse sack in the other. I decided that resistance was futile, better to just try and blend in. But I kept my head well down in case I was spotted by a fellow passing journalist in a car. I returned home a much chastened individual. I have discovered that many city


dwellers don't like the countryside or they wouldn’t chuck wine bottles and soft drink cans into the fields. I even found a pair of discarded jeans during my litter operation and, for a brief moment, I fancied myself as a crime scene investiga- tions officer. Fresh air can turn you mad very quickly. I also felt the faint stirrings of a call of the wild. Who knows? Perhaps I’m ready to branch out and turn over a new leaf. I am full of respect for the volunteers – adults and children – who gave up a


Saturday morning to return something back to the countryside. Hundreds of hawthorn, oak, alder, willow and rowan trees are now growing. I must return in about 100 years to see how they are doing.


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