The Elfin woods of South America are now hidden away in the highest most inaccessible parts of the great Andes mountains, having retreated there to escape the axe.
Survival in the high Andes is tough. It is said that there are only two seasons, the fierce heat of the day and the numbing cold of night time, both seasons interrupted by storms and gales.
The one tree thriving in this mean climate is the elf sized Polylepis tree, a type of rose. Contorted boughs and twigs show its constant fight with the wind. The trees thick red surface, made of layers and layers of insulating bark point to its nightly struggle against the cold.
If nature wasn’t enough of a force to fight, there was man, who had the same enemies as the tree. But man could fell the tree in the knowledge its wood would keep him warm. So it was for century after century until the the tiny trees were nearly gone.
We set out on a ” Living Wild in South America”, expedition, to find some of these elfin trees and like most pixies they evaded us for months.
Eventually we found a small copse near Santa Catalina, the border country between Argentina and Bolivia. Here, tucked away down the steep slopes of a gully, we could see the evergreen mantle they cast over a stream. It took an hour of tricky, slippy, sliding steps to stand in their shadow.
At a distance they reminded me of another sacred tree, the Yew. But these trees were small and grew amid succulent cacti.
Never have I seen such a jumble of trees. Nothing was straight, everything about their trunks, boughs and branches was twisted, warped and wrenched. In their bark you could see contorted faces, beasts and long noses, limbs reaching out as if to grab you. These were trees crafted to sustain the elements.
In this arboreal grotto I heard long exaggerated notes of a bird. Some way off on tangle of twigs like the end of a witch’s broom, a pair of Streak-fronted Thornbirds perched and sang their duet. This was a living vibrant woodland after all, and not just for Elf trees.
