WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM TREES (THUS FAR)

Liam McMillin

            My study of trees started as soon as my infant gaze accidently pointed itself upwards out of the stroller or backpack I rode in.  Some of the first memories I have of trees are of the branches that hung over the trail that my mom or dad would have to duck under with me on their back.  Then, these branches were disconnected from a trunk; they were separate entities entirely. 

I learned about trees in books: the Womping Willow, the Truffula trees, the Giving Tree, the tree where J. J. Pomeroy lived.  I drew trees, with dark brown bark colored by Crayola markers, green foliage, with the blue sky a line at the very top of the paper, the grass a darker green drawn at the bottom.

I knew the trees in our yard, but for a while, the only one I was confident in naming was the cherry tree.  The white blossoms followed by fruit made it distinct.  Next for me to identify was the apple tree given to my parents.  Then the oak in the backyard, the black-walnut further back.  Then I began to wonder about the trees in the yard next door, the flowering tulip tree, the massive cedar, the pines, the crab-apple.  As I grew, I spent more time with the trees, rather than just near them.

What follows is a catalog of four trees that have stuck with me, although my head and heart carry many more seeds. There will be many more trees in my lifetime, as there already are many more than are mentioned here.

The Crab-Apple

Wild Crab Apple (malus coronaria)

“The wild, sweet-scented crab apple! The bare mention of its name is enough to make the heart leap up, though spring be months away, and barriers of brick hem us in.” (285)

            In front of the entrance-way to the daycare next to our house (but one I did not attend), sat the crab apple.  This tree rose from its roots, and split two and a half feet up.  Both parts of the trunk grew outwards, then curved towards the sky, the red buds and fruit beginning to be held at about eye level for me now.  The tree itself is probably ten or twelve feet high, at its highest point.  The branches dart this way and that, neither the lines nor the bark smooth.  Red leaves, flowers, and fruit adorn the dark gray/brown branches.  As I stand with this tree now, I raise my hand and pull a leaf towards me, inspecting the red lines that sit within the green, thin veins, pencil drawn.

            This was the first tree I remember climbing.  The memory is quite clear.  The climb itself consisted of a single step, into the crook of the two arms.  Holding myself steady against one of the offshoots, what is most vivid is the new perspective being held up by a tree brought.  Standing in this new spot, I could see over the hedges, past the fish pond.  I could almost see our house, past the cedar too large to actually be a tree.  This crab-apple, or “cra-bapple” as my dad would call it, was my first tree.

            I remember asking whether or not I could eat the fruit.  They were called apples, and resembled shrunken cherries, after all.  My parents told me that they would be very bitter.  They were.

            Trees, and Nature, from my earliest memory, changed then, and constantly change, my perspective.  I am held off the ground, and see past the hedge, past the man-made fish pond.  I am Nature looking at Nature, but in order to see it, I need to be held in the arms of the crab-apple.

            But to get there, I have to take that step.  I must climb upwards, even if it is only two and a half feet.  I must engage with the tree, I must wonder what its fruit taste like; I must wonder why it tastes bitter; I must wonder what is beyond the hedge.  Like stepping and climbing, engaging and wondering are willed actions, but unlike stepping and climbing, the mind does not will and the body respond, but the body requires and the mind listens. 

The Lightning Tree

White Pine (pinus strobus)

“Stroke the leaves of a white-pine branch – they are soft and flexible.  As they sway in the wind they are graceful and light; the tree seems decked with plumes of dark blue-green.” (24)

            When the Lightning Tree became the Lightning Tree, I was picking strawberries with my mom, some miles away. The bolt woke sleeping Jack, my dad said, and shook the air.  In the morning, we inspected the jagged line of white sapwood exposed by the bolt, spiraling up into the crown.  I am still amazed it did not burst into flame; the white pine is a particularly resinous tree.  The scar never healed.  The stark white faded a little, but the jagged bolt remained.  As we grew, the Lightning Tree remained alive and bright, its needles blue-green, the furrows in its bark orange.  This tree eventually became the first hole of our Frisbee golf course, always.

            I was not there when they cut it down.  When I saw the stump, I sat with the Lightning Tree for awhile, counting and recounting the rings.  The yard looked different now.  One of our friends had left us.

            Trees are always more than trees.  They stand far above our ability to describe them.  Their roots stretch deeper than we can guess.  They occupy more space in our heads and hearts than we are able to see.  As natural beings, we participate in Nature, but it is not easy to be Natural.  Our consciousness, naturally derived, is pointed outwards, working to lift ourselves to the birds-eye view, to strike from the thundercloud, downwards.

            But the Lightning Tree was struck from beneath.  The scar was thickest near the bottom, the energy coming from below.  As I sat with the stump, I was closest to the epicenter, closest to the natural bolt.  As much as our perspective changes as we climb into the arms of trees, so does it when we sit near the base.  When we remember that lightning is the connection between the static electricity of the sky and the earth, we remember that we stand on the same ground the Lightning Tree does.  We too are able to be struck by lightning.  We conduct energy through our veins as the white pine does, and with our toes furrowed in the mud, we are both grounded and charged.

The Weeping Beech

Weeping Beech (fagus sylvatica)

“Sometimes these bud scales lengthen before the shoot spares them.  The silky, brown scales of the beech buds sometimes add twice their length, thus protecting the lengthening shoot which seems more delicate than most kinds, less ready to encounter unguarded the wind and the sun.” (551)

            The Weeping Beech was always a room.  Whether summer leaves provided wallpaper, or the bare branches held the frame of the walls, I would sit on the ground and feel separate from Main Street.  In those minutes, those hours, my thoughts were pointed inwards.  I was protected by the branches that touched the ground all around me.  I always sat quietly, running my fingers over the smooth bark, marred here and there by initials and carved hearts.

            I have always felt at home away from Main Street.  I often feel the call of Thoreau’s cabin, but beneath the Weeping Beech, I am far from the Street in every way, even physically.  Nature, I must remember, is everywhere.  Nature perceiving Nature is the human experience; it cannot be separated from my life. {This section needs more details, information, setting, description…}

“On Being (in the Woods)”

   LHM

It does not matter the time of year,

I best hear my heart when trees are near.

For the forest provides what my room cannot,

And many person has too forgot:

That our roots do not grow below our feet,

And the sky, our branches cannot meet,

And while we too have a trunk upright,

It is the nature of the tree that gives this light.

The Sycamore

Sycamore, Buttonwood, American Plane Tree (platanus occidentalis)

“The ‘hoary antlered sycamore’ in our damp woods is a tree that the stranger will never forget after his first introduction to it.”  (279)

-/-

The Sycamore

Leaning far over the stream,

Peering into the deep pools,

The sycamore, ever the fisherman,

Casts no line from his spool.

Sycamore Spring

Do not fear the parade of the trees

as they travel from winter to summer. Stand

in awe beneath the sycamore,

its bark-scales glinting in new sum.

Count the round fruits, not yet obscured by

new leaves, against the blue sky.

Climb into its arms, and be held as you once were.

Hold yourself in new stead this morning, with

the tops of the roots pressed against the small of your back.

Hear the wind in new grass, and feel it behind your ears.

Count your breaths in two’s.

Count the sycamore’s in one.

Breathe together, as Nature,

meterless and steady.

            I am Nature looking at Nature.  And this reflective structure is mimicked in my study, for in order to recognize the Nature both within and without, I focus on the “looking.”  What I have learned from trees, thus far, in my life, is how to look at Nature. Nature, like the crab apple, lifts my perspective past my short sighted view of the hedge.  I can stand in front of a tree, and say, “This is an oak.”  And I am right, most of the time, but not most of the way.  The “oak” is more than my word that I use to describe it, but I have to describe it before I can see that it is more than that.  Consciousness, as a natural phenomenon, is seemingly pushing outwards, needs not be reigned in, but reoriented downwards again, so that Nature is seen through the natural consciousness.  To begin to understand our Nature, we can use trees, not as mirrors, but as guides, as friends, as reminders that Nature is our being.

Rogers, Julia Ellen. The Tree Book. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company,

            1906.