From board feet to beings
In the past few months I have had a number of experiences that are shifting the ground of my orientation towards and relationship with trees.
I had worked with this on an intellectual level before - trees as beings rather than objects - but there is something about body knowing and gut knowing and emotional knowing that can shift one’s orientation in a way that rational thought alone may not be able to.
My shifting orientation proceeded something like this: I was up at my family’s place in rural western Massachusetts, and awoke to the sound of vehicles and wondered if someone was pulling into the driveway. I didn’t hear any car doors slam, and so I thought no more of it until a few minutes later when I heard the low rumble of vehicles again and thought it might be the loggers who I knew were working in the neighboring forest. It was confirmed a little bit later with the whine of a chainsaw. It seemed very close to the house and so my partner and I went to investigate. We found a man with a chainsaw and protective headphones and helmet within eyeshot of the house. I thought “Did they cross the property line!? This seems too close!” My heart racing, I ran up to the man, waving my hands and shouting. He didn’t hear me at first with his headphones on, but I persisted and was able to catch his attention. “I think you are cutting trees on our property!” I shouted.
He seemed flustered and somewhat defensively explained that a surveying company had accurately marked the property boundaries, and he was only cutting where he had been told to. I acknowledged that I understood that, but I thought the property line had been drawn in the wrong place. I asked for his boss’ contact information, and upon receiving it, left to investigate the property line myself. My heart sunk as I saw tree after beautiful tree marked for cutting: large majestic pines, perhaps two feet in diameter, towering towards the sky. I had known these trees. I had appreciated the peace and beauty of these trees. I had taken for granted that they would always be there. It had never occurred to me that they might be taken away, so unceremoniously “harvested.” It tastes gross in my mouth to utter that word in this context.
As my partner and I walked the property line that had been marked by the surveyor, we saw parts of the land where we had never been before, back where the land abuts the state forest. And we crossed over a bit onto our neighbor’s land where they had been doing the cutting. It is jarring to see a clearcut so close to one’s home. I am shuddering at what the sight of the clearcut will be from the bedroom window when they complete their cutting.
But it had all been rather abstract before – a word, an idea – clearcut. It is another thing to be in a forest that has freshly been cut at the waist. What a waste. After the loggers left for the day, we followed the logging trail – essentially a trail of carnage – limbs strewn across the ground and encountered the stumps of some much larger trees – perhaps three feet in diameter.
I lay my hand at the top of the stump and thought of the remaining tree below the waist – the massive root system that lay beneath this now gaping stump. Because that’s what they say – there are typically as many roots below the surface as branches above the soil – we only see half of the tree when we look from above ground. How did the tree feel without its upper half? When I close my eyes, I am immediately transported back to this tree, or what remains of this great being cut at the waist with a gaping wound of a stump now staring up at the heavens. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, but snowflakes drifted eerily down, lending a post-apocalyptic air.
It took us the better part of the day, but we were able to confirm that it did indeed seem that the property line had been surveyed accurately, or at least according to property records, which are somewhat ambiguous in the town of Savoy. But still, it felt like a massive crime had been committed. Certainly not against me personally, but I felt it acutely on behalf of these trees which were once a forest. The wheels of my mind spun at how someone could massacre a forest this way. I have waxed intellectually about the mindset that can see a tree as board feet rather than as a living being, but putting my hand on that stump, it suddenly flooded me that all of my life I had seen trees as objects as well. No more: with my hands on the waist of the tree, I finally knew, this was a living being.
The tears I was not able to shed in that moment are flowing now as I write and remember the devastation of that living forest.
I now feel connected with that decimated forest in a way as I never had before in the many years of living nearby during my childhood, and all the afternoons of exploring the forests and wetlands. What is it about loss that wakes us up to a greater reality that we have been oblivious to all along? Trees are living beings too. There was something about connecting my body, through reaching out with my hand through touch that joined me with that forest. There was something about the raw emotion of that moment that broke down lifelong barriers of mental distancing. Over a hundred miles away, in a building, in front of a computer screen, I somehow still feel connected with that forest. It is somehow with me, and I with it. And even in its severely wounded state, I invite that intimacy. You might say I feel the stirrings of the bond of love. Which is good, because they say that people defend what they love, and I love this living Earth, so it is good to feel it in an embodied, non-abstract way. It hurts, but I still know it to be good medicine. I can still see that tree stump as soon as I close my eyes. It is with me and I am with it.
Image source: http://www.phillyorchards.org/tag/crotch-angle/
The next day after this encounter with the logger, we again woke early. It was Saturday so no logging was happening, no roar of vehicles and chainsaws, but we were up early because we were signed up for a workshop on pruning at a nearby orchard. There was a certain irony to observe reckless, senseless (no logic other than maximization of converting trees into money) cutting one day, and the very next to learn about selective, fruitful cutting. Did you know that fruit trees only bear fruit on horizontal branches? So orchardists take great care to prune off much of the vertical growth and train hardy branches to be more horizontal. Also, the closer the angle between branch and trunk to 90 degrees (this is called crotch angle), the stronger the connection and the less likely the branch will break with stress of weight or wind.
I stand just blown away at how very incredible trees are. Did you know that many a fruit tree can be cut to a stump, and it will then send up new shoots, or you could even graft a branch from another variety of tree onto it and it will continue to grow? Wow!
The morning was spent in the classroom as we learned about different types of pruning cuts – header cuts or thinning cuts. If you cut a terminus of a tree branch, the life impulse of the tree is thwarted and will send up many shoots lower down as it attempts to send its vascular energy elsewhere. This is called a “header” cut, and you want to be careful about making these cuts because of all the new shoots it encourages. Fruit only grows on horizontal limbs, so vertical shoots direct much energy from the tree into growing branches rather than fruit.
In the afternoon, we got out into the orchard and tried our hands at some pruning – a branch here, a branch there, but by no means, taking the entire tree. The orchardist showed us one tree that he hadn’t gotten around to pruning the year before and it was a jumbled mess of new growth. The tree’s urge to grow is formidable, life’s impulse to continue inspiring.
I am thinking now about the difference between a clearcut which indiscriminately cuts everything, and pruning which only selectively takes, which dances with fruit tree dynamics so as to enhance fruit production. How can we shift our human relationship with the living Earth from one that takes and takes and wastes the living world, to one which takes only what we need and coexists in a mutually beneficial way?
The following weekend I was at Woolman Hill, a Quaker retreat center also in Western Massachusetts but perhaps 30 miles from the land where I grew up. I was there for a workshop combining the Dances of Universal Peace with the Work That Reconnects. For me, the Dances are a deep embodied spiritual practice of praying with your feet and orienting towards peace, while the Work That Reconnects helps me to be honest and authentic with my responses to this world.
As I was dancing, I looked down and the knots on the wide wooden planks of the floor jumped out at me. Tears choked in my throat as it hit me – these boards were once living trees. Were those knots where the branches had once grown from the trunk? What had been their crotch angle?
And all of a sudden the pain – all of the pain that is inflicted through the construction of human dwellings became unbearable. And I was overwhelmed. I thought to myself, “I just can’t do it anymore. I can no longer bear to be a part of death that does not honor the life that was taken.”
When the dancing stopped, I was drawn to a table and sought out paper and pen to ink a few reflections. My eye was drawn to the wooden boards that formed the west wall in the room. With tears streaming down my face I wondered – “Did they scream when they went through the sawmill? Did the trees scream when they were felled? If the only part of a tree trunk that is alive is the cambium, does it hurt when a tree is cut?”
And then it struck me – my God, the table I was writing on was wooden too. Never having experimented with hallucinogenic drugs before, I wouldn’t know, and so I wondered if this was what a bad trip is like? All of a sudden the ground of my reality had shifted and what was once just a room made of construction materials was no longer just a room. It was a dwelling constructed by humans made of formerly living beings. Were their lives taken with or without care?
It dawned on me that an awakening of ecological awareness – sensitizing one’s self to the rest of the world as living – brings with it the enormous pain of feeling the destruction our species is causing. Because a living being is an entirely different ball game than a pile of commodities. One thing I knew for sure is that the immense pain of the truth of the devastation humans are causing if felt, was only bearable if accompanied by the warm embrace of a life-sustaining culture. That is what the community that had assembled for this weekend workshop was exploring – how we can be with one another in peace. Without this support and container of love, I simply think the pain of what our species is doing might be too great for one to bear.
And feel we must, because those beautiful beings that are trees deserve for us to wake up to an ecological awareness, to regard all life as sacred, and so we must build a life-sustaining culture, so that people can be supported to wake up to the pain of the devastation we are causing and change our ways.
It’s not a linear process – this ecological awakening. It comes in flashes and spurts and you really can’t predict when the clouds will open and the sun will shine through.
I certainly had had no idea that I would have this response to the “wood” in this room. I had been in this room dozens of times, but never once before realized that these boards were once living trees. It had never previously been part of my conscious awareness. But with that awareness, I now squirmed: I don’t want to be the part of taking the life of another anymore unless I do so in a way that honors that life. Discomfort can sometimes be good. It is feedback that a situation is no longer tolerable. It can drive us to actually change our behavior, to pledge: no more. I can no longer be party to the taking of life that does not honor the life that is taken.
Shortly after these experiences, I found myself driving in the car (my most frequent daily encounter with trees is from the car window), and suddenly, instantaneously it dawned on me with lightning realization that the trees I was hurtling past were communities of living beings and not just backdrop, not just scenery.
This was totally new for me. It reminds me of the cultures that know that forests are alive, and are eyes that are always watching. Practically, that helps to regulate behavior so that people do not take without taking care, but less practically, more spiritually, the presence is entirely different. When I know a forest as a community of beings, I feel entirely differently to it. It is an awesome and holy and voluminous presence that is now there that was not there before when I apprehended the trees as objects or as scenery. A community of beings with presence is entirely different. It is a revolution in relationship.
It has now been over a month since I had these experiences with trees and sometimes I feel myself slipping back into trees as backdrop, trees as scenery, trees as things, objects, just there, static – that is the default. But still there are moments of sharp clarity when I stand at attention in the presence of this or that community of beings and I am in silent awe. Even gazing from a car window, hurtling by at high speeds with the separation of metal and glass, my perception of forests is still often altered – I will notice that there is a part of me that can actually feel my senses in those particular woods, feel the moisture levels, how much sunlight was penetrating, the smell of the soil. Not just background. Not just scenery. A living, breathing community.
The ruts and grooves of conditioning to orient toward and relate with trees as objects is so deeply ingrained, that I know that it will not just be one or even three or four flashes of insight that will help to make this shift more permanent. I need to weave a new relationship in my consciousness with trees as beings. And that will take time. I don’t want to go back to relating to trees as objects, and writing this affirms my commitment to being in relationship with trees as beings. I was thinking about walking to the woods nearest my home to visit with them now, and then got overwhelmed because that is a good 10-minute walk away. My life isn’t structured to have regular contact with trees as living beings as I spend so much time inside a building or a car. I don’t want to go back to trees as objects. I want that so much that now I am even starting to think about ways I might restructure my time and life to spend more time among these living communities, getting outside the wooden boxes of buildings more frequently and the metal boxes of cars. I’m going to keep that commitment to reordering my life to have more intimate connection with communities of tree beings. But for now, I don’t have to reorder everything. I can just close my computer and go out in my backyard and visit with the two peach, two apple and ornamental cherry trees that are residents there.
(originally written in April 2016)