Only Visitors in the Forest

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash

Tree as the Origin of Life

A maple tree grows near my first-floor balcony. It’s green now, just on the cusp of yellowing for fall. When these words are read, it might already be autumn gold or leafless in winter — or the budding green of new spring. Time doesn’t matter so much when it comes to trees.

Buddha was said to have reached enlightenment beneath a fig tree, and Odin tied himself to Yggdrasil — the world tree — for nine days and nights to gain knowledge. The ancient Irish believed that eating the nut of the hazel tree would give a person poetic inspiration.

In the region where I live, Lenape tribal legend says humans sprouted from the roots and branches of a tree on the back of a giant turtle.

There are stories of sacred trees in every culture. And no wonder: they make up entire biomes, providing nourishment and protection for vegetation and animals alike. One of the largest organisms on earth is a colony of quaking aspen called Pando. An entire forest, interconnected and related by root and seed.

A tree is a home, then, and an ecosystem. When a tree stands in the desert for many arid centuries, it petrifies and becomes stone.

How many things can claim such fluid nature?

They build their own communities in partnership with the animals and insects and fungi and other plants that live alongside them.

A tree was cut down so that I could write these words on paper. And so, a tree can also be a story.

The 200 Year Old Bois D’arc Tree

When I was much younger, one of my favorite places to visit was a massive bois d’arc tree near the Dallas Arboretum. I was jealous of the children who could climb its low branches, but even without that ability, I loved walking beneath the leaves. The tree was large enough that it gave the impression of a tent — you walked past the low-hanging branches and inside found a wide, sprawling shady resting place.

It’s bigger in my mind now — in reality the bois d’arc tree only grows to around 40 feet — made legendary and larger than life by the awe I felt back then. The fact of its size is less important than the impression it left. I had always loved trees, from the softened stump in my backyard that housed roly-poly bugs, to the twins in the empty lot beside my house that became a makeshift altar for offerings of acorns and sticks. Trees held life and promise, shelter from the raging Texas summer heat, and a place to watch snails crawl and moss grow and rivulets of rain collect.

That tree introduced me to the experience of trees as sacred place.

Credit: https://www.lanabird.com/2012/06/22/back-to-the-dallas-arboretum/

I later learned the experience of “not-tree” in college. During a winter trip to Manhattan, the novelty of the big city was gradually stifled over three weeks of skyscrapers and gray overcast sky. The only trees were barren small things occasionally dotting sidewalks, and a few carefully curated, picturesque scenes in central park.

By the end, all my classmates and I wanted was to walk on grass and touch tree bark. The city was lively and rainy and exciting, but all of us felt suffocated by the lack — by the not-tree.

We returned back to our shady campus; even during leafless February, it was a relief. Back to late night walks and breezy afternoons, the shadow of branches beyond our dorm windows.

A Treehouse Stands in the Windy City

Chance led me to Chicago after graduation, a city built on a swamp beside an expansive lake that gave the impression of a saltless ocean. There were small parks nestled in unexpected places, the city’s deliberate attempt not to forget the natural world over which it had grown up.

A misadventure with an apartment that lacked water pumps and flooded during every storm ended in moving south to one of Chicago’s secret grottos. We called our apartment the treehouse — a one hundred-year-old red brick, ivy covered building. You could walk a few blocks to find an almost deserted stretch of the lake, a perfect spot for weddings due to its serene isolation. Further and you’re greeted by an uncommon sight: the Roman-styled Museum of Science and Industry, originally built for the 1893 World’s Fair. It’s a quiet sanctuary in a busy world, surrounded on one side by a duck pond and a grassy, tree-lined path that leads eventually to the Garden of the Phoenix, a Japanese garden complete with picturesque bridges, a small waterfall that’s perfect for contemplation, and a little river that flows among flowers and shrubbery and small, twisting trees.

Waterfall at Garden of the Phoenix in Chicago (Credit Mine)

The lake and garden were my refuge for the year I lived in the tree house. In a time when Chicago faced a major spike in violent crime and one of the coldest winters in history, I knew I could find myself again there. It was an imperfect, harsh time made tolerable by ivy, leaf, quiet lake, and a squirrel who made its nest on my windowsill.

When the lease was up and it was time to find affordable rent, it was back to the drab north of the city. Back, in many ways, to reality. The only garden was a small vegetable plot my neighbor grew but never harvested. Beyond, dirty sidewalks and a highway lined with broken fences.

It was affordable though, so I put up with the constant construction outside my cracked window, the stove with a single burner that worked, tiles that fell off my bathroom wall, and, towards the end, a ceiling that fell in pieces onto my head.

When you have a decent enough job and affordable rent, it’s amazing what you’ll ignore in order to hold on to your perceived comfort.

By my fifth year in that apartment, I was ready to leave. This time somewhere unexpected but familiar — the east coast, not far from the city of not-tree.

Old Growth in the Garden State

Most people think of the shore when they hear New Jersey. For those of us in the northern part of the state, it’s the maple trees and red oaks, the hilly gravel paths and wild waters of Hacklebarney State Park, the neat rows of apple trees at the cider mills, the historic log cabins in Waterloo Village. I may have found myself in Chicago, diving headfirst into the responsibilities and anxieties that come with adulthood. But in the northeast, I lost myself again.

Hacklebarney State Park (Credit Mine)

I thought I had experienced nature in its fullness until I moved to the Appalachian Ridges, where roads wind through endless green in spring, vibrant golden red in the fall, and sleepy glistening white in the dark months when the hills sleep.

Life in cities, rambling from tree places to not-tree places and back, clinging to bits of green, culminated in days beneath untamed canopies spread over gently rolling hills, endless and sacred. Birds visit my apartment now to steal the peanuts I leave for a neighborhood squirrel. I fed her mother first, and now her. There’s a bluejay couple who’ve brought their entire family to squabble over treats, and over a dozen young sparrows who roosted in my balcony occasionally come back to spy from the maple and yew bushes outside my glass door.

Deer step quietly through the grassy slopes at night and feral cats lounge happily in the sun. Skunks venture out shyly beneath the stars and hide in the cedar trees during the day.

These little miracles have marked a meaningful shift. Everyone has wounds and worries; it’s part of the journey. But there was no real healing in a city where nature was hidden like a secret and carefully controlled to behave in its narrow borders. Here in the forests, the green, the old growth trees, there is a truth that can’t be spoken. It must be lived. And in the silent world of leaf and clean air, here is spirit. Here, we can safely lose ourselves, and in that loss, find freedom.

We are Only Visitors

No matter the stage of life, trees have been with us. The nothing stump, the proud bois d’arc, the quiet shade that shelters stressed out college students, the half-hidden picturesque parks in chaotic cities, the orchards and wilds between towns. Steadfast they stand, roots growing deep beneath yards and sidewalks, sprawling branches reminding us in great leafy crowns that we are only visitors in the forest, that we must step lightly among the vines and trunks and pay respect to the true giants of the earth, many who have and will outlive us by centuries.

We show our appreciation by planting more trees in hopes we might offset the impact of deforestation and pollution, or by naming a four-thousand-year-old bristlecone pine Methuselah.

When a tree dies or is cut down, we grieve its loss. Here was a tree, and now there is not a tree. We are grateful for the resources it provides but saddened by its crude transformation into toothpicks and paper.

It’s no wonder Buddha found enlightenment under the fig tree, and the Irish Fionn gained all the world’s knowledge by eating a fish who swallowed a hazelnut. These are stories, maybe with some truth, but the facts don’t matter as much as the message.

We built cultures and belief systems around the base of oak trees, crafted boats and wheels to travel, constructed homes and castles and forts with the bounty of trees.

We are raised by trees and die among them, and in between those moments, we pass from tree place to not-tree place, helped along every step of our lives by our silent companions.

After death, some people are buried in wooden caskets, and others even have saplings planted above their graves.

The Lenape people believed we were born from trees. Maybe that story holds the most truth.

Without them, who are we?