Country diary: As close to immortality as British nature can get | Mark Cocker

Fortingall, Perthshire: Standing in front of this truly great yew tree - some say the oldest in the country - one wonders how to capture its totalityThe yew in the churchyard here has a legend as the oldest tree in Britain, although its exact age is a matter of dispute. Many propose that it is older than Christianity and some that it could even predate Stonehenge.Perhaps a more revealing comparison arises with an "artefact" from about the same period (circa 3000BC). It's the man called "Oetzi", whose leathery, ice-preserved remains were extracted from a Tirolean glacier in 1991, along with his deerskin boots and bearskin cap. Oetzi carried a mark of high prestige in his little copper axe, but this state-of-the-art technology also had a handle made of the same wood as the tree in Fortingall. The Scottish yew has thus endured from the age of copper to a time when children (like those standing next to us as we visited) take Snapchat shots on smartphones. Continue reading...