The Company of Trees
by Joseph Jastrab
My prayers for freedom have been answered. Not in ways I prefer, but in ways I've come to accept as natural law. When we call for greater life, we are calling for change. I have to watch myself carefully though. These labels: "freedom", "change" and "greater life" are dangerous. I too easily idealize them. When I pray for any of these, I sometimes forget that I am agreeing to death and rebirth. So much for idealism.
The winds of change, which formerly struck in short-lived gusts, have continued to blow long beyond their normal time. The once firmly held structures supporting my career, marriage and friendships are being stirred by currents that pay no homage to pride, self will or fear. Any structure not grounded in truth is being decisively uprooted and leveled. On the surface, my mind perceives nothing but destruction. Change of this magnitude is far too wild for the mind to relax and rejoice in. No amount of reasoning will piece my world back together. Or hold it fast against nature's laws. Beneath the surface, I feel a call to humility and a movement of surrender to a deeper instinct.
I find myself walking the same wooded trails over and over again. This allows me frequent visits with a few trees with whom I've become closely acquainted. I watch how they handle themselves in the wind, admire their steadfast grounding in the earth, the strength and flexibility of trunk and limb. Through it all, they stand. They invite me to do likewise. I waver. I want "to keep my options open." I can imagine no envy in them for my ability to wander across the earth in search of my place. None whom I've met have given me the slightest inclination that they would trade places with me. That's the thing about trees, they don't trade places. They belong. They live forever at home. Their commitment to the dark earth they stand on roots them into something eternal. No, they watch me wander, but do not lose themselves in the watching.
Buried in the origins of our language, I find an ancient reflection of my feeling for these trees. The word "true" and the word "tree" have sprouted from the same Germanic root. This gives me hope. What we recognize in the life of another is always something that lives inside us – something waiting to be seen and claimed by our own eyes.
Strands of hemlock have offered a particularly warm invitation to be among them. The silence they generate is perceptibly different than that of a stand of oak or maple or even their close cousin pine. I cannot continue walking through a hemlock grove without pausing for a moment. My eyes are attracted to the way their lacy layers of needled branches disperse the light, scattering the ground with drifts of sunlight. Their straight trunk and furrowed bark embody a simple dignity they are not ashamed to hide. My ears relax into the soft drone of their branches at play with the wind. But it's something else that brings me to a standstill – something so refined and spacious about these beings. They have the power to absorb my busy mind. They leave me mindless.
My awareness is abruptly stilled when I first enter a sanctuary of hemlocks. I feel time slowing down, the world stops for a moment. These tall standing ones are the holders of such grace. I become their apprentice. My ability to sustain such an intimacy with the world of stillness and silence remains fleeting at best. The hemlocks suggest I stop practicing, stop keeping time. All they tell me is to simply stand among them. Elders that return me to myself when fear causes me to forget. They tell me I confuse freedom with "keeping my options open." Everything about these beings suggest I will have to belong to somewhere, to sometime, to someone before I will be truly free. Fully belong. They see right through my costume of prideful self-centeredness. And, if I can bear the shame of my nakedness, I might become humble enough to simply stand as a more-than-human-being among them – a being at home in a living cosmos.
Even in their death, there is something noble and dignified about trees. I have had the good fortune to witness a number of these stately kings fall to the ground when decay had weakened trunk and root. And, more often than not, the fall has taken place in complete stillness, not so much a whisper of a breeze. A sudden, loud crack announces their death cry as the trunk and crown tear through surrounding limbs. The tree comes to rest with a thump that shakes the ground. All ears of the forest turn, at once, toward the sound.
Trees die at home. They fall on the very same ground that gave rise to their birth. They follow their generative destiny to the end, like an ancient king who sacrificed himself so his blood would renew the soil and thus insure a healthy crop to feed his people. The sight of a young, green sapling growing from the body of one of its elders always makes me pause to reflect. I am the sapling that grows from the sacrifice of those who have come before me. And, I am the elder for those whose experience reflects a lighter shade of green than mine. What have I gained from my ancestors; from all the life that has come before me? What do I have to give to the unborn?
Somewhere, in the silence between these two questions, is the truth of who I am, and the possibility of freedom.
