Tree Teachings

 

I breathe in

the scent of

moist wooded bogs,

crystal lake waters,

baskets of dew

heavy and sweet

soaking heat

through every pore…

note withered leaves

shriveled mosses

and still

the rains do

not come.

 

The Earth is on Fire.

 

Stagnant pools

shrunken trunks,

the lack of fruiting bodies

falling leaves

a crisped ground

beneath my feet

remind me

that grief must be

felt with as much

awareness as possible

to create the

necessary bridge…

 

My weeping pine

keeps me mindful –

 

The Earth is on Fire.

 

Two thousand year old Redwoods

succumb to flaming

heartwood…

Yet some will live on.

Trees know that

There is nothing they

can do to stop

this holocaust

besides witnessing,

accepting their dying,

leaning into

the Grief of the Earth,

as she yields

to the power of

‘What Is.’

 

 

Working notes:  From the personal to the collective

 

A few days ago I had to take down a pine tree that I loved. Although I did not do the actual cutting I did make the decision to end the tree’s life, so I am the one responsible. My young friend made the cut, felling the tree in just the right direction; his father who was assisting felt a fierce wind hit his face as the tree slammed into the ground just beside him. Indoors, I shuddered involuntarily even as relief flowed through me like a river. It was over.

 

This tree cutting was witnessed by “tree people” – three humans who truly love trees. Afterwards, Marcus came to me. “Are you all right?” I choked back an avalanche of tears. Not (at that moment) for the tree, but for me because, like the tree, I too had just been witnessed by this boy’s sensitivity – For the first time in my 75 years I was not alone with my tree grief. No other words passed between the three of us but the depth of our feelings united us with each other and that tree. Not a shred of separation between us. Amazing, and yet so comprehensible.

 

I felt sorrow over the loss of the tree; but also, strangely, accepting. The next morning I wrote the following about a dream I had and began a tree tale not realizing that we three – father, son and I were still sharing a field. I was not yet alone.

 

Treefall

 

In the dream a giant tree comes down – it has just been cut. I thought the whole tree was alive – but I am surprised to see that half of the tree is already quite dead. I see its gray whale -like body lying supine without its skin. It looked like a piece of driftwood lying on the ground.

 

The night before this event I poured water at the base of the tree as a blessing, gathered herbs to place against her trunk. I lay my hands on rough bark as I spoke … reminiscing about the bear fur I first found scattered around her pine-rooted floor. I told the tree how much I loved the sound of her needles rustling, the intoxicating scent of those that fell to the ground, the “candles” s/he bore in late spring, the masses of pine cones that appeared shortly thereafter. How kindly s/he blocked the heat of the summer sun from the house; how much I loved her. I told her too that I hoped that she would not feel too much pain. I listened then for a response and sensed a stillness; this tree knew what was coming and accepted her dying. There was no answer forthcoming regarding pain… This tree also had a sister/brother tree that would be left standing alone. (I called this marked tree a female but all white pines are monoecious meaning that each tree produces male and female cones).

 

That was as far as I got.

 

An email came in from Marcus a few minutes later that addressed my question: did he feel that trees experienced pain?

 

What follows is his response.

 

“In my experience, I have found that trees certainly do feel pain. The difficulty is in understanding it because the pain the trees feel is only knowable at a visceral level in our bodies. The pain in my body is the tree ‘s pain. The tough part is that because that pain is in my body, it gets mixed up with my own feelings of loss, which makes it immensely challenging to sort through. However, a few weeks ago when I had to cut down an apple tree that was being destroyed by tent caterpillars the separation of this pain was discernable. Once the tree was gone there was an immense release of pain in my body. But even so I still carried the sadness of the tree’s loss…I spent so much time getting to know that apple tree that I could feel it drowning in its own sap because it could no longer photosynthesize. Yesterday was different. I could feel the tree and the split but couldn’t communicate with it as well…I was so nervous and stuck in my own place (we were all nervous – the tree was 167 feet tall). But what I know for certain is that trees accept death much easier than we do… the dying hurts physically but the trees are never scared of death or regretful at what is being left behind. They are much more in touch with the fluidity of their spirituality and with the cyclic nature of life. They understand that death is not an endpoint… Dead trees that have stumps continue to live as they transfer what I think of as their essence, meaning soul, spirit, consciousness to whatever comes next. It is only when the underground network for transference is ripped away that a tree really dies.”

 

I should add that Marcus is a nature mystic, though he doesn’t yet know it. A scholarship to Dartmouth left him feeling as if he didn’t belong and after a year he dropped out. Now he cares for his family’s forest, cuts trees when needed, creates magnificent art from dead trees and trains for the Olympics. He is 21 years old.

 

It stuns me that someone who is 50 years younger than I am could be such a powerful teacher, friend, and the first person I have ever known that feels the way I do about trees and can communicate these ideas/feelings on such an embodied level. I adore him.

 

The following day I learned firsthand about the terrible fires that are ravaging Colorado after talking with a woman who cannot even leave her own house (I have deliberately been avoiding the news).

 

That night I had a catastrophic dream rife with cultural holocaust elements. On a personal level I was about to go under…

 

When I awakened that morning I was so sluggish I could barely move. I dragged myself outside and stood quietly by the tree soaking in her dying scent. Pinenes. Tears were seeping into the heartwood from the still living cambium. I thought of the billions of burning,  slaughtered trees. I felt helpless and quite stupid. Profoundly depressed, I knew enough to stay with the grief as I moved through the day; the trees had taught me well. My body felt like lead. I fell asleep in the early afternoon.

 

The next morning I awakened refreshed; the collective grief had receded because I felt it and didn’t try to hurry it or twist my experience into some bizarre form blurring its painful edges with new age ‘gratitude,’ the most common cultural form of denial used by people to avoid dealing with anguish. I paved my own way to peace and illumination on a personal level by being with others who truly loved trees and allowed themselves to feel their grief as I did. In this process a gift was also given to a dying tree.

 

It interests me that as a ‘tree woman’ that I was still called to feel catastrophic tree grief on a collective level. By avoiding the news (because of Trump) I was also lacking in awareness and knowledge. Our Earth is on Fire, trees are dying by the billions, and these beings need to be witnessed, especially by those who are capable of standing it (so many are not and I think this is part of the problem). It was only after moving through this process a second time around that I could come into a state of peace. Blind acceptance of the death of billions of trees seems out of place in this context. Resignation is not an endpoint. The trees will guide me into whatever comes next. Of this, I am certain.

The Tree Mothers Are Dying

The smoke clogs

my lungs;

a steel band

wraps itself around

my chest

tightening its hold.

The horizon

is dull gray.

The trees are burning

And I cannot breathe…

Innocent trees are dying

by billions, tortured by

hungry flames,

turning wood to ash,

rooted smoldering corpses

cannot escape.

Charred trunks,

crisped brown leaves,

needles curled, crackle and fall.

Sweet cambium –

The life – blood of trees

smothered by air

fiery tongues

and I can do nothing

to stop this holocaust

that brings me

to my knees.

And I cannot breathe.

Yesterday at dawn

I walked

to the river

in the heavy

thick air.

My lungs

laboring,

my feet dragging,

my head pounding,

the

outlines

of mountain

and mesa

blurred by an ominous haze

wondering what was

wrong with me.

I could not breathe.

It was as if the predawn

sky reflected

the hell – the torture

of burning trees.

Like holy women

burned at the stake

for healing with herbs

the trees are screaming

the lungs of the Earth are exploding

and I can’t breathe.

Trees weeping white tears

enduring the unendurable,

and still the rains do not come.

A ten minute deluge

cannot suffocate fires

scorching trillions of rootlets

tunneling deep underground.

And I cannot breathe.

Where are the Cloud People

that once gifted the Earth

with silvery ribbons of water

that flowed until

each tree and plant

was satiated

glowed luminous green?

I cannot breathe.

They have gone away

taking the monsoon

rains with them,

leaving humans to

their Fate.

The Earth is on Fire.

And yet,

even today we deny

that the death of trees,

(whose breath is our own)

forecasts our own demise.

The Tree Mothers are Dying.

And I wonder why

I cannot breathe.

Working Notes:

I wrote a poem about my troubled walk to the river yesterday only to have it disappear into cyberspace leaving me very upset and unsettled because it had everything to do with trees. Trees feel like some of my closest relatives.

Unable to let it go and knowing I could not recover the original poem which was better crafted than this one I was still compelled to write another. One thing I have learned as a writer is that I must follow my instincts…

I learned to love trees from my mother who spent a lot of time climbing them. As a child I swayed in light breezes on tree limbs, slept in leafy feathered branches and conversed with avian friends. Trees marked the changing seasons, and living amongst elder trees and loving them was a childhood passion I never outgrew.

As an adult the Apple Mother called me to her, nurtured me when I moved into my first real home located in the midst of what once was an apple orchard. Ancient gnarled apple trees were my daily companions with whom I had many wordless conversations. At midlife mindless tree slaughter on the edge of my property and a terrorized maple tree led me to leave that home for the mountains of Maine where I thought there were fewer people to harm them and trees were more abundant.

But once I began living on the edge of wilderness I was confronted with the realities of Maine logging and the fact that in this state trees were systematically harvested for whim or homeowner profit and always for the sake of a burgeoning economy. Maine currently has less than 16 percent of mature forest (2012 statistic) remaining. Bears and chickadees are moving northward for food and raped land surrounds my property on three sides. Dirty yellow machines roar and crash through once peaceful forests. The smell of chainsaw oil nauseates me. One of my immediate neighbors chopped the crowns off his trees and let them die slowly in agony. I witnessed this dying every single day. It took years.

I thought I had survived three lifetimes of tree slaughter by the time I fled to the high desert. It was a relief not to be surrounded by large trees. I immediately fell in love with the scraggily gnarled junipers some of which lived for hundreds and hundreds of years because they weren’t particularly “useful” as fuel.

Most recently, the Cottonwoods have stolen my heart with their rustling scalloped leaves, although I also learned that because of damming and water shortage that these elders would not produce young saplings that would survive to become the next generation of cottonwoods because these trees must have direct access to an ever shrinking water table. I settled for loving them with all my heart for now.

Then came last winter. We had no snow, no spring run off, no rain, the warmest spring on record – 90’s by late May – 100’s in June and by then forest fires had been burning out of control all around us and elsewhere throughout the southwest since spring. There were cheery rumors of a heavy monsoon season with plenty of rain to come but I had a very bad feeling about the truth of this prediction. Trees communicated to me that my senses knew something people did not. And, as I feared, the rains have not come except in teasingly small amounts. For example 0.03 inches fell late yesterday afternoon. It is now almost the middle of August and the monsoon season is coming to a close. The meadow in front of my house remains the color of winter wheat. And the ground is so dry it crackles under my feet as soon as the torturous sun hits the ground.

The junipers, highly adapted to high desert environments are in trouble. These “indicator trees” have bunches of dead needles throughout and growth is all but absent except in areas that are irrigated. One of these trees I have adopted as my Guardian tree. I know by now I can’t save them all but this one tree is watered daily and has responded by shooting up six inch spires of new blue green growth. Each morning I take a moment to touch her branches and talk to her just as I converse with the Cottonwoods. I remind myself daily to live as much in the present as I possibly can because all life on Earth is changing at a breakneck speed because of human indifference and greed. There may be no tomorrow…

Even with an attitude of resignation that sometimes borders on acceptance things have been getting worse. As the fires burn on I wake up to the smell of nauseating smoke. Each day is hooded in haze although the heat from the sun appears to be relentless. My energy level has plummeted not just because of the intolerable months of heat but also because of what it means to see that daily gray haze clouding my vision. The trees are burning.

Up until this week early pre-dawn walks to the river were my salvation, and my friend Iren’s Bosque has been a refuge. But a few days ago all that changed. Instead of trotting off happily in the dark to meet the river before sunrise I noticed that my breathing was becoming labored as I walked. I do not have breathing difficulties so I experienced this sudden change as alarming. What was happening? It wasn’t until I wrote this poem that I finally got the obvious: The trees are burning, and my identification with these beings is probably partially responsible for causing breathing difficulties for me. My very sensitive body is also like a tuning fork and any changes in the atmosphere affect me when others have no problems at all.

For all of my life the “Tree Mothers” have been with me long before I named them as such or understood that trees and women are two elements of one undivided whole. We are intimately related, as anyone who is even a bit conversant with world mythology knows. The cross cultural “Trees of Life” indicate to us that this relationship between trees and women stretches back to the dawn of humankind.

Perhaps this is why women gather round trees to protect them, as if only

we could.

What I didn’t know then was that I was developing emphysema …. the smoke exacerbated the respiratory disease which my doctor in Maine believes was brought on by the polluted air. Since that time I have spent more and more time in Maine where the air is clear and I can still hike hills …… No one talks about the air pollution that is rampant through the Southwest – We need to know – especially those like me that are vulnerable.

9/20/20