We have been fooled into taking the short view. The trees know this.
In the little barely-blue room, where I’m sitting to write to you today, there is a small oak vanity table that once belonged to one of the great-great-grandmothers in my family. Sometimes I imagine her sitting in the tiny chair that accompanies it. What does she see when she looks into the oval glass, with its floral-carved crown? More than herself, I suspect, even though she would not know to see me as I am now, here in this room with what once belonged to her.
Not knowing everything that’s to come is not the same as being short-sighted.
“If Darwin had studied trees, we might have a whole different view of things now,” my daughter recently said to me. After supper, she’s been reading us The Hidden Life of Trees.
Trees, who can live for thousands of years, take the long view, and for this reason they are very, very kind to all their members. Relying on an underground network of communication via roots and fungi, they will sometimes do things like send sugar and water to threatened trees on the other side of the forest, temporarily giving up what they could take for themselves alone. What the trees understand is that the health of the whole forest depends on the health of even its weakest members, for if they let the weak trees suffer and die, then too many gaps open up in the overstory, and then the wind can come in and wreak havoc, knocking even the strongest trees down. Trees, oddly, to our eye, will even take care of mother trees that died long ago, sending sugar and water to still-living roots whose trunk and branches turned to humus hundreds of years prior.
Though our library is now closed to the public, I’m grateful that I happened to have Farmacology on my book pile before they told us to keep their books until further notice. Written by physician Daphne Miller, it’s a fascinating look at taking the long view with one’s health—supporting the whole person by first supporting the whole community that makes up a farm. She also suggests we think less in terms of diseases we want to kill and more in terms of health we want to build from the inside out. The book is worth reading in its entirety, but today it simply made me think to make pine needle tea. (Please note that the type of pine is important, if you try this at home. Some are toxic. And never use the bark or twigs. Just the needles.)
I don’t usually get sick, and if I do it passes quickly, but a few serious stressors have been pressing in since early this year, so I’m ill, and I can’t get out from under it. Today, I turned to the trees.
Recently, we ran the poem Small Kindnesses in Every Day Poems. I want it to be true, so very much, but I fear this part might be getting in the way for many of us:
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire.
The idea in the poem is that we therefore rely on “Only these brief moments of exchange,” to do the work of being closer to tribe and fire, to do the work of having more of each other. But I’m thinking we need a longer view, that we consider building more than “fleeting temples.”
The white pine which today gave up her needles for my tea was planted by someone I extended a secret kindness to, while he was dying of cancer. It was a small kindness of solidarity. I decided that since his life was being eclipsed I would eclipse something particular in my life. I did it for a year.
The house I now live in belonged to him and his wife. After he died, she eventually met someone and began a second chapter in her life, moving all the way to Wyoming, where she is happy. The white pine, she told me, weeks before I moved into this home, was planted by her husband twenty years earlier. He had rescued the tree from a lot up the street that was being sold and cleared. It was a long view, though it could not see what was to come.
Thank you, I whisper to him now.
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Lori DiGisi says
Thank you for this post.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The trees, indeed, have hearts.” I often think of this as I walk through the trees. Their loving kindness is palpable and buoys my spirits. I turn to the trees when I need positive energy. Just laying my hand upon the bark, I can feel a positive surge of energy run through me. I take that joy and carry it throughout the day.
L.L. Barkat says
You’re welcome, Lori. I do like that picture of you putting your hand to the tree to find joy that carries.
Maureen says
Small kindnesses: yes. No matter how small, they matter. Sometimes, we just don’t know how much.
Bethany R. says
Heartening to read about how the trees send help to each other despite their age or condition, and that ends up being a safeguard to the whole forest. Thank you for sharing this. I hope you feel better as soon as possible.
L.L. Barkat says
Feeling better has been a slow process, made the worse by recent deep grief. The last few days I turned to beets (whole juice), cranberries (whole juice), and vitamin C powder. I have to say that of all the things I’ve been doing, this high-C elixir seems to have taken things to a new and better level, though the pine needle tea also made a perceptible difference. Highly recommend. 🙂
Will Willingham says
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire.
Seems that most of us already had these far away relationships dependent on these brief exchanges with at least someone in our lives, if not someones. And now this distance extends to nearly everyone, for many a complete reversal in organization. The small kindnesses, wherever one can find them, wherever one can extend them, are crucial.
Laura Brown says
The interdependence and kindness of the trees is the opposite of hoarding. This discussion reminds me of “Braiding Sweetgrass.”
I am, yes, feeling far from my local, habitual fires and tribes. I let myself get indignant over a social-distancing violation from a well-meaning neighbor. Once I apologized for my anger, she could finally hear why I felt threatened by what she did. And that healing conversation was probably the best one we’ve had in the years I’ve known her. So … how to keep from cutting off our own roots, or refusing nourishment from those in our real interwebs.
L.L. Barkat says
The trees are old (and wise 🙂 ).
I think there is a lot of sorting and seeking going on in our souls right now, as we trouble over how to find our way in a new landscape. I do wish you wisdom and discovery along the way. (It’s what I’m wishing for myself, too. 🙂 )
Kristina Neal- Mosley says
this is amazing!