The Love Of Trees

[tariki]

Does anyone else here share my love of trees? I'm not quite at the hugging stage, yet seem to be well on my way.....

 

Seriously, I find the sight of individual trees healing, and as time passes, more and more, they almost bring tears to my eyes, just looking at them, the beauty of them.

 

I wouldn't want to intellectualise it too much, but I think part of it is that they seem to be a complete chaos of branches and leaves, yet contained within an essential symmetry.

 

And individual trees, not forests.

[Brent]

Since I was very young, tree climbing was a favorite pastime for me. One summer job was climbing to remove dangerous dead or dying limbs at a Holiday Inn Travelpark in Virginia Beach. I truly enjoyed that work, studying each climb from below and planning to navigate the difficulties. There was always time to relax, breathe, and sense the peacefulness.

 

Many times I’ve been drawn to a particularly inviting tree and climbed to the very highest (and smallest) of branches, where I’ve propped myself into the forks and enjoyed a wonderful exhilaration among the swaying leaves as clouds drifted by just over the treetop. Ah, the oaks, magnolias, beeches, hickorys, pines, sycamores, poplars, gums, and more...So I'm blessed with many fond memories, including some very, very tight hugging!

 

Just today I’m involved in a repair project on my small ‘arborist’ chain saw, and my livelihood involves handling and building with wood every day. I, too, am thankful for trees.

[JosephM]

Derek,

I can't say i'm more particularily fond of trees more than anything else but as you may have read in one of my posts it was while i was staring at a tree, (no drugs or spirits) that i had one of several life changing experiences/realizations that remains with me to this day. I imagine if the tree wasn't there it would have been something else in nature.

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Yes, I love trees. I have even hugged one once, hehe! This was during a time where everything I touched seemed to flow a positive energy through me, and like Joseph, it was not drug induced. I think it was a very deep connection with the Spirit of life. I had been in a meditative state for several hours prior and I think I somehow connected deeply to the energy of life itself; I was able to feel it and experience it on a very deep level. It was a beautiful thing and I'll never forget it.

 

I was on cloud 9 for about a month after this happened, very happy, peaceful, joyful, etc. It is truly one of my fondest memories and yeah, I hugged a tree. It was actually a pine tree, an evergreen, and when I wrapped my arms around it, it was as if if it were magnetic, a very positive and powerful flow of energy from it to me. Weird right? I guess that depends on who you ask, as I have spoken to others with similar stories, so perhaps it isn't as uncommon as some might think.

 

James

[JosephM]

 

It was actually a pine tree, an evergreen, and when I wrapped my arms around it, it was as if if it were magnetic, a very positive and powerful flow of energy from it to me. Weird right? I guess that depends on who you ask, as I have spoken to others with similar stories, so perhaps it isn't as uncommon as some might think.

 

James

 

How uncanny. The tree in my experience was also an Evergreen tree, However i never hugged it unless you count the experience of being that, the same as hugging.

Joseph

 

PS Missed you around here lately and most happy whenever you stop by.

[Quaker Way]

Trees are part of my human conscience. No two are alike and their forms grow up from the ground filled with the Sprit of True Nature. I have hiked through forests and have camped surrounded by them. I have been protected from storms by them and have heard them making sounds in the night wind. There is something about trees...something that they know, something much deeper than we can guess at with all of our science and pretensive intelectualizing. Enya released a CD some years back called 'The Memory of Trees'...perhaps she suspects this too.

[soma]

A interesting note on the Red wood tree. They are hundreds of feet tall, but they have no tap root and their roots are very shallow. They manage because their root systems are intertwined. They have lived centuries and have many stories to tell. Tree take my breath away.

[JenellYB]

Synchronicity at work here....I just came back inside, having been once again, as has become often lately, considering upon all the plants in my yard, with special deep concern for my trees. I have some truly majestic and special trees here...there have been people that wanted to buy my place soas to tear down this old house...which I also love deeply....it was actually built while my mother was pregnant with me, came into my life at a time of desprate need of a home and little resources for aquiring one...but they would tear it down so as to build some fancy McMansion to sit among these magnificent old trees...

 

This area in SE Texas is one of the hardest hit by drought...even on a local level, the drought conditions are not spread consistently, for what rainfall there has been has been almost entirely in the form of scattered showers and thunderstorms, one neighborhood may get a downpour, while only blocks away, there is nothing. It has been a persistent pattern rght here where I live, all the years I've lived here, that being strategically situated as it is, in a V-shaped wedge between the watersheds of two major rivers as they make their way to the bay system from whence they feed into the Gulf, that such rain storms repeatedly pass to one side or another, leaving us here sittng dry.

 

My place is among the most parched of parched within the regional eco-system....there was even no growth of spring grass, I've watched as many of my plants, cherished many years, many passed down to me as family heirlooms, lose their battle to survive...

 

And now, my trees, these grand magnficent old trees, I am seeing their suffering, both grieving them personally, as well as the practical cosiderations of having to deal with the branches, some bigger then most people's entire trees, that overhang andshade my little house....an oak estimated to be 150-200 yrs old, that took a HARD hit, lost so many branches, 2 1/2 yrs ago during hurricane Ike...an 65 yr old native pecan, and an 85 yr old papershell pecan....those also hit hard in the hurricane...

 

Among those slightly further from the house, 3 magnificent 65 yr old bald cypress....they normally turn shades of orange and yellow and brown, to drop as they enter dormancy in October to November.....and 2 of them are NOW entirely browned and shedding their needles....

 

Jenell

[rivanna]

Soma, interesting note –one of my kids recently sent me a photo standing by a giant Sequoia in California– awesome. I’d love to see them someday.

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky. – Kahlil Gibran

The groves were Gods’s first temples. – William Cullen Bryant

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying Ah! – Joseph Campbell

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of…When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off. – Willa Cather

[Realspiritik]

Yeah, I love trees. So patient, so wise. Couldn't be happy or healthy without them.

 

This is an awesome thread.

 

Jen

[tariki]

Yes, thank you everyone for posting here.

 

Brent's post did bring back memories of me as a lad - long gone days - when a gang of us would seek to carve our initials on the bark at the highest point we could reach, the higher the winner! Good grief, when I think of it now I wonder how I had the nerve! Yet I suppose then we had the immortality of youth!

 

Thanks again

 

Derek

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Old Man Johnson

 

 

He sits there quietly

beneath an aged white oak,

with his eyes gently closed,

and arms resting firmly

between tree bark,

and the nape of his wrinkled neck.

 

 

The most subtle of sounds

he rests upon,

from the song bird nesting

amidst the canopy of leaves above,

to the trickle of an icy brook

running eastward

from a majestic mountain spring.

 

 

He simply sits, and listens...

 

 

A heavenly bouquet surrounds him,

created by wild flowers in bloom.

With a slight tingle of the nostrils,

and fragrance above french perfume,

the scent fills his every breath,

then lingers pleasantly within his nose.

 

 

And old man Johnson just sits there,

like he always does (Right about noon)

quietly, under that old white oak,

with his eyes gently closed,

and his arms resting firmly

between tree bark,

and the nape of his aging neck.

[soma]

Great poem, thank you for the experience.

[Realspiritik]

Beautiful poem. I felt it all the way down my spine. Thank you so much!

 

Jen

 

P.S. Are you the author? Would love to hear more from you.

[Jagged Zen Monkey]

Beautiful poem. I felt it all the way down my spine. Thank you so much!

 

Jen

 

P.S. Are you the author? Would love to hear more from you.

 

 

Thanks, Jen. I wrote that about 4 years ago, maybe longer. It was the only poem I could find out of a collection of a hundred or so. If I can find the others, I'd love to share them.

 

Take care,

[Robertus]

I love trees.

 

I love everything they represent. The fact that they are the culmination of all of the Earth's energies into a living thing, the ability to grow and regenerate, all of these things resonate deep within my spirit.

 

Since I've lived in the desert my whole life trees are a rare sight in the wild. But every now and then on a hike or a run you'll stop and find a random waterfall from a spring and a beautiful grove in that same spot. The Beauty of these encounters can be incredible.

[christiansoul]

Trees are lovely to look at. Maybe it's because of the color, maybe because of their forms... Somehow whenever I look at them, they sort of radiate tranquility and beauty. I love it when their branches and leaves sway with the wind or when the sun shines through them. Really nice.

[Raven]

Trees give me hope - especially after a long winter. I always imagine their bony hands reaching up to the heavens.

[jonnyb]

my 3 year old doesnt - i just went out to him whacking an acer with a stick.

 

he said it was to 'help the leaves come down'

[tariki]

my 3 year old doesnt - i just went out to him whacking an acer with a stick.

 

he said it was to 'help the leaves come down'

 

Though maybe best to wait until the leaves are ready to fall of themselves, I can see his point! I remember long ago as a lad, piling up the autumn leaves in our local park. A gang of us made a mountain of them, them spent a long afternoon taking a long run up, and then leaping into the pile, almost disappearing from sight! I suppose, thinking back, there could have been all sorts on the leaves - many dogs were let off the leads in those days! But, hey, I survived to tell the tale. Luckily "Health and Safety" was still well in the future!

 

[JenellYB]

I think part of the mystique of trees that touches something within many of us is that they are about the only living thing most of us will encounter in our lives that span multiple human generations. I have wonderful large old trees in my yard...when I look at the 3 bald cypress, 1 native pecan, 2 red oaks, and 1 Southern Magnolia in my yard, that the old man I bought this placed from told me he remembered helping his mother plant as just little saplings, when he was just 10 yrs old, in the same year I was born, and then at the papershell pecan that is even at least a decade older then those, and a humongous red oak that had shaded the house that had stood here before this one was built 63 yrs ago, and which by size estimate may be as old as 100 yrs old, I am absolutely awed by that.

Sadly, Hurricane Ike in 2008 damaged this oldest tree badly, taking out many of it's huge limbs...I had many of its limbs down in my yard that were bigger than many of the entire downed mature trees many were dealing with...I'm afraid it was ultimately a fatal blow for it...it's been in decline ever since, more dead wood every year, and now mistletoe has been progressively infesting it worse each year....and as much as i dread having to eventually figure out how to deal with it, how to bring down a tree with a truck diameter of at least 6 ft, that stands only about 18 ft fromthe back of my house, I even more actually grieve it's suffering and decline as it struggles for survival these last few years. It was, before Ike, so absolutely magnificent, with a full lush canopy that deeply shaded an area nearly 70 ft across...now enough sunlight penetrates that thick grass has now been able to cover most the area beneath it's span.

There is something in this span of time across multiple human generations that, to me, anyway, forms something of a living connection between the people of those generations...5 generations of the family that owned this place before me walked and sat in the shade of that tree....at least 4 of those generations played within it's limbs as children.

 

Jenell

[tariki]

Thanks Jenell.....

 

A poem by Gerald Manly Hopkins, "Binsey Poplars", which were felled to make way for "civilisation"...

 

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,

Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,

All felled, felled, are all felled;

Of a fresh and following folded rank

Not spared, not one

That dandled a sandalled

Shadow that swam or sank

On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do

When we delve or hew—

Hack and rack the growing green!

Since country is so tender

To touch, her being so slender,

That, like this sleek and seeing ball

But a prick will make no eye at all,

Where we, even where we mean

To mend her we end her,

When we hew or delve:

After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.

Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve

Strokes of havoc unselve

The sweet especial scene,

Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.