\n<\/p>\n
Tony Gates was one of the first to hear the bad news. The chief executive of Northumberland National Park, a 400-square-mile swatch of rolling hills and wild moorland on England\u2019s northern edge, he received a phone call early last Thursday informing him that one of the area\u2019s most celebrated landmarks, the tree at Sycamore Gap, was no more.<\/p>\n
At first, Mr. Gates was relatively sanguine. The tree<\/a> had stood for two centuries in a dip roughly halfway along the 80-mile run of Hadrian\u2019s Wall \u2014 the northernmost boundary of the Roman Empire at its peak, constructed to distinguish the civilization of England from the barbarism of what is now mostly Scotland.<\/p>\n The tree was iconic in a literal sense: Its silhouette had become a shorthand for the area as a whole, depicted on an array of locally-produced gins, beers and cookies. But it was also a living thing, and, as such, it was \u201cfinite,\u201d Mr. Gates said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The previous night, Storm Agnes had whipped across northern England, bringing with it 60-mile-an-hour winds. Mr. Gates assumed the tree, 70 feet tall and set in what is essentially a wind tunnel, had toppled in the storm, a sad but natural end. He dispatched a trail ranger to assess the damage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was when the ranger reported back that everything changed. The tree had not been brought down by natural forces. The cut was too clean. The trunk had been daubed with white paint. An incision known as a wedge cut had been made, designed to guide the tree\u2019s fall. The ranger was unequivocal. \u201cHe said it was gone,\u201d Mr. Gates remembered. \u201cSomeone had spoiled it.\u201d<\/p>\n What followed, he said, was \u201coverwhelming.\u201d For many, both in the northeast of England and much farther afield, the loss of the tree<\/a> represented what Mr. Gates called a \u201cpersonal loss.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people felt a personal connection to it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Many more, though, felt the pull of a pair of intertwined, irresistible mysteries. If a tree is felled and nobody is around to hear it, how does anyone begin to find out who was responsible? And, almost more intriguing still: What possible motive could there be for attacking a tree?<\/p>\n A few hours after the ranger\u2019s report, when Mr. Gates arrived at the Sill, a glass-fronted information center a mile or so from where the tree had stood, he found visitors in tears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Now, children\u2019s portraits of the tree line the walls of the swiftly-established \u201ccelebration room\u201d dedicated to the tree. So many people wanted to offer tributes that the park authority set up a book of remembrance; it quickly filled up with memories and poems and messages of thanks. Those who could not make it in person paid their respects however they could. The Sill received phone calls from across the world.<\/p>\n At Herding Hill Farm, a campsite a couple of miles down the road, the owners, Phil and Sue Humphreys, received somewhere in the region of 3,500 comments about the tree on their Facebook page, messages from locals but also strangers in South Africa, the United States and Australia. \u201cAnd that\u2019s just us,\u201d Mr. Humphreys said. \u201cThere were so many that after a while we stopped counting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That the tree\u2019s demise elicited such an outpouring of emotion, he said, was not a surprise. \u201cWe know of people who have scattered ashes there, and we\u2019ve had guests who proposed there,\u201d Mr. Humphreys said.<\/p>\n It was, Mr. Gates said, the sort of place where \u201cpeople created memories. It was a punctuation mark on the landscape,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was part of the natural heritage of this part of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the days that followed, that sadness mutated. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more genuine anger now,\u201d said Matt Brown, the chief brewer at the Twice Brewed Brewing Company, which occupies the land next to the Sill. Its best-selling product, naturally, is an ale called Sycamore Gap. \u201cYou see the fury online, and you just presume that\u2019s the internet being an empathy filter. But people are saying those things out loud now, too, and they\u2019re completely serious.\u201d<\/p>\n Few of them believe that all of this is the result of a spontaneous act of wanton destruction. Felling a tree of that scale requires considerable expertise at any time, let alone in the middle of the night and in the middle of a storm. <\/p>\n Besides, although the tree was relatively easily accessible from both east and west, it was still at least a 20-minute walk from the nearest parking lot. \u201cYou would have time to think about whether you really wanted to do it,\u201d said Mr. Brown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Northumbria Police, the local law enforcement agency, reached the same conclusion, describing the tree\u2019s felling as \u201ca deliberate act of vandalism<\/a>,\u201d one that had not only destroyed a beloved landmark but also damaged<\/a> Hadrian\u2019s Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Two people were swiftly arrested in connection with the incident: a 16-year-old boy and Walter Renwick, a farmer in his 60s. Both have been released on bail as the police continue to carry out \u201ca range of inquiries.\u201d Even before his arrest, Mr. Renwick had protested his innocence.<\/p>\n