Things I Have Learned From Trees

Each quarter, my students write a personal essay in response to some occasion - it can be anything that happens (assuming proper classroom discretion). Given that requirement, we call them occasional papers, and they must be shared orally with the class. I also contribute to the anthology of shared occasions. This one is from late May. I wrote part of it at the desk in my room, and part in my classroom at school.

Things I Have Learned From Trees

By the time I traversed the path from my driveway to my back door, 6 or 8 of them were inextricably tangled in my hair. Those annoying scalawags that fall from oak trees in the spring - spreading pollen and baby oak trees - are everywhere. I looked up only to narrow avoid being pelted in the eye by one, and was immediately drawn into the past in a sort of reverse “That’s so Raven” moment.  Back to a day 20-some years ago when another discard from another tree spread some wisdom on me that I have carried with me since.

It was the August following a rough two years of loss and struggle that was inaugurated with the death of one of my best childhood friends in a head-on collision, and climaxed in a gunshot somewhere in Arizona that ended the life of someone I still loved heedlessly, though he was lost to schizophrenia before the bullet. In a search for solace, like any good Transcendentalist, I found myself at Walden Pond, among the trees, treading in the footfalls of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson  and looking for something. I didn’t know what. A walked the trails for a while, and then I sat down at the base of a tree and looked up to get a clearer picture of what the thick, green, leafy canopy overhead might be trying to whisper to me on the breeze. Like that oak skalawag today, I saw a single vibrant green leaf coming toward me, fluttering down like a mystic missive bringing me news from whatever is out there that could help me make sense of things, or at least make peace with them.

I watched it fall past the lower branches of its family tree, past some smaller pines, past my head, and into my open palm. Inspecting it, tracing its shape in my palm, I was struck by its perfectness. Not a spot of brown, not the remnant of an insect snack. That leaf had no reason to fall. No reason that I could see. It looked just like all the other leaves still up there in the canopy independent of each other and connected- verdant and whole.

“Why this one?” I whispered, to it or me or Henry or the tree or God or the universe. I turned it over and over looking for something. And the summer breeze rustled up a whisper back. I couldn’t quite make out words (I may lean toward the mystical, but I don’t think trees speak to me. At least not in English), but I understood. Our lives are fragile and we, like the leaf, may fall at any moment for reasons beyond reason.

Ok, I already knew that. I had been wallowing in it for a while now. But I understood then that rather than thinking life pointless in the face of that knowing, I understood that within that fragility is where the meaning lies. I understood that what we must live deliberately while we are here, because soon enough we won’t be.

I also understood that on that day, I wasn’t the leaf that fell, I was one of those up in the canopy. And just as they would keep living out their leafy nature, with strength and integrity, for as long as they held onto their branch, I should do the same.

I don’t know if my backyard oak tree was trying to tell me something, but it did make me chuckle with the realization that some of my best teachers have been trees (and other plants).

And since all teaching is inherently an act of hope and sharing, I don’t think they’d mind if I shared some of the things I’ve learned from trees. (At the risk of sounding like the Lorax.)

I love trees. (My next tattoo is going to be a tree) It makes my morning better that the first sight outside of the window over my bed is the embrace of a sassafras. I know I don’t have to tell you all the good things about trees. I’m sure each of you could come up with something you appreciate about trees. Shade, oxygen, soil retention ____( space purposely left bland for audience participation). All of those things make the world better by their existence. Trees don’t have to make big bold gestures, they don’t have to travel to distant places, they don’t have to have great reserves of power or money to change the world. They, like you and I, have great power to change the world, to make a difference with a million small acts, every single day, right where we are, wherever we are.

I have sometimes lamented on their behalf the fact that trees have to spend their lives rooted in one place. Certainly they move and bend and interact with the world, but having deep roots restricts your range of movement. Strong as they are, even the Whomping Willows in the Forbidden Forest (Harry Potter geek allusion) can’t get up and walk away. I think that’s why I have never bought a house and never wanted to.

But here’s the thing - you need to put down good roots to grow tall and strong. And as you grow taller and stronger, your horizon expands, you can see more and more of the world you can send out your branches and your leaves. And as your roots spread further  your reach extends toward the sky. And you send acorns out into the world.  Of course, we don’t grow in straight lines, trees rarely do. But they can grow around obstacles and through them, and so can we. We’ve all seen how a tree can crack its way through that concrete sidewalk trying keep it from its destiny, without caring what the concrete thinks about it. We can aspire in as many directions as we can sprout branches. We can follow the light. And I can’t speak for everyone, but I definitely photosynthesize.

And our lives, like trees, are vulnerable.  We are threatened by storms, toxins, even possibly men (or women) with axes.  We go through the cycles of a hundred deaths and rebirths in our lives. Losing pieces of ourselves, dropping leaves and maybe some bark, but saving up energy in our resting seasons, we regenerate, we regrow, we respire. And we inspire. People write songs about us, and make art, maybe tattoos. And we give shelter, and life, and safe landing places for those who need it, white-breasted nuthatches, or friends and family.  And our legacy even after all that can be lasting and beautiful, as people take what we can give them and build it into their own beautiful lives.

Too often we take trees for granted. And as much as I love trees, I don’t generally go as literally far as Thoreau who wrote that  he “frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines." And I will still curse the pollen in the springtime, through watery eyes and a thousand sneezes.  But I’m pretty sure that tree, that leaf, at Walden Pond saved me that day, or reminded me that I can save myself and I am worth the air and shelter and love I inhale every day and then cycle back into the world. We all are.  After all, we and the trees share a lot of DNA. We have all imbibed the same water as the dinosaurs, and we have all breathed in the remnants of stars.

Tomorrow, when I take the broom out to my patio to sweep away the last few discarded skalawags (which are apparently really called catkins) that have fallen from my oak and discolored the concrete as they do every year, rather than cursing them between sneezes, I will whisper thank yous.