The Giant Cross hidden in an irish forest

In 2016 passengers in an aeroplane flying over Ireland looked out the window and saw something incredible.

A massive Celtic Cross made from thousands of trees, hidden in plain sight in a small forest in Donegal.

200 meters in length and 100 meters wide, this cross is huge and must have taken a equally huge amount of work to create.

But initially no one knew where it came from or who planted it and no one came forward to admit that it was them.

When the secret was revealed, it gave a lot more value and meaning to this cross than it first appeared.

But unfortunately it might not be here for as long as it could be.

Story

I first found out about the cross several years ago when I saw a photo of it on social media.

And to be honest initially I thought it was really cool but I didn’t really think much more about it. It’s one of those things that once I saw a photograph of it, I felt like that was all the value I was going to get from it.

And then I began to learn parts of the story behind it and realised this is a story worth telling. Because this is about a lot more than just a cross in a forest, it’s also about a man who kept a secret, and a man who made something that had relevance to all the important things in his life.

Last week I finally made contact. Sadly not with the man who planted it, but with his son. Because the man who planted it, never got to see it.

The Forest

The forest where it’s planted is actually a commercial forest owned by Coillte who are the semi-state owned Irish forest service and unfortunately that could turn out to be a very very bad thing for the future of the cross...

Who?

So in 2016 after those airline passengers spotted the cross and reported it to the media it was eventually revealed to have been the idea of a man called Liam Emery.

Liam Emery (photo supplied by Declan Emery)

Liam was a forester and in the early 2000s he was given the job of replanting the forest.

This is a commercial forest, planted to be harvested. It's really a crop, like a big green field of wheat. These commercial forests are not very exciting and not particularly nice to look at.

But Liam saw an opportunity.

He saw a hill that in Autumn would be facing perfectly into the warm sun at just the right time for the trees to work their magic.

Tree Magic

Because there’s a bit of natural magic at play here.

For most of the year, the cross is barely visible, just a slightly different shade of green from the surrounding area.

But once we get into autumn, it changes from green to gold and practically glows in the sunlight. Because it’s made from a different species of tree than the trees around it.

Liam’s colleague, Bernard explained that they had spent 6 years meticulously plotting out the design and planting thousands of trees. The cross itself contains over 3000 trees, so there must be 10’s of thousands of trees in the forest around.

Tragedy

It’s just a shame that Liam didn’t live to ever see the end result of his work. Not long after the tree planting was finished he had a kayaking accident and suffered brain damage that he never recovered from.

Liam died a couple of years later in 2010 at the age of 51.

It would be 6 years before the cycle of life and death of the larch needles would finally reveal his creation in all its glory.

I made contact with Liam’s son Declan who told me a bit about his dad. The first thing he mentioned was just how much of a family man he was, always made time for his family.

He was also a hardworking man, always up to something, be that coaching hurling, hill walking, kayaking, projects about the house or plotting to create a massive secret cross in a forest.

The Future

It's an impressive secret.

But the question is: I had was, how long will this be here?

In theory the trees could live for hundreds of years but there are a few factors that could mean this cross disappears within the next 10/20 years, or the next 50 years.

As this is a commercial forest, its ultimate destiny should normally be harvesting. The entire forest clear felled and left looking like a battlefield, not a tree left standing.

However there are rumours that the forest might be left alone by Coillte, but nothing is official.

Another issue is that due to the nature of forestry plantations, the trees can be particularly vunerable to storms unless managed.

Last winter some forests lost 10,000+ trees in a single night during storm Éowyn. In a few years, the trees in the forest with the cross will be tall enough to be vulnerable to those kinds of storms.

Unless the forest is managed in some way, the cross could vanish in a winter storm.

Management means thinning trees, which means heavy machinery, which even though it can help strengthen the remaining trees, it could still damage the appearance of the cross.

So the future of the cross is uncertain.

How Does It Work?

Ok lets get a bit nerdy and talk about how that golden transformation actually works, because it’s really cool.

Most of the forest is Sitka Spruce (North American), the cross itself is a different species. It’s Japanese Larch, which is one of the few conifers that is deciduous.

This tree is capable of detecting autumn. It’s able to sense the shorter days and cooler temperatures. And when that happens, it activates a survival mechanism.

It reabsorbs nutrients and moisture from the needles, the green chlorophyl breaks down, turning the needles yellow. The dead needles are sealed off, and one by one they fall off in the winter winds until the trees are left looking dead and bare until spring when they are reborn in green.

I was thinking about this and Liam couldn’t have picked a better tree for a huge symbol of Irish Christianity. A tree that every year goes though the cycle of Life, Death, Rebirth and Glory.

It’s not often that people make something that has meaning for everything important in their lives.

Liam has left something behind that has brought joy and comfort to his family and friends, something that reflected his love of hard work and doing things the right way, his love of the outdoors and nature and the depth of his faith.

It’s pretty special I think. And I’m very glad I’ve had time to share the story.