The Sound of Trees Crying
This week’s exercise in our mindfulness group is to become aware of the trees around us. This is easy for me because I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of trees.
Growing up, I would watch and wait for the blossoms on the pear and apple trees to turn into fruit. Then, climbing up into its branches, I would sit in the trees devouring the fruit from when they were small sour nuggets until they were soft and sweet. This continued until the unpicked fruit had fallen to the earth.
In 2008 New England had a devastating ice storm. I awoke to what sounded like gunshots. It was tree branches snapping and falling in the woods all around me. The sounds went on for several hours. Whole trees that stood for hundreds of years toppled under the weight of the ice,
Snowshoeing in the days following the storm, I would encounter smaller trees that, having been bent over by the ice, were now stuck in the snow. Each time I found one, I would stop and tug them free. Then I would gently pull the tree back and forth, easing them back into their upright positions.
That fall, leading up to the December ice storm, I had lain on my mat after savasana looking at the old oak tree outside my window. The leaves of the other trees outside the window had already fallen to the ground. However, clusters of leaves still clung to the oak. I pondered why the oak leaves took so long to fall to the ground.
Every day I would observe that a few more leaves had fallen while some clung stubbornly to the tree. I wondered why. Did retaining some of its leaves somehow protect the next generation of leaves? Had those leaves gotten an extra share of some cell when it connected to the twig last spring? I watched and wondered.
Then one evening in the deep of winter, just as it was getting dark, I walked past my dining area window. I heard a voice coming from the direction of the tree. The voice said, “It is to give you hope that spring will come.”
I had never heard a tree talk before or since. I still find it hard to believe, but it really happened.
Fifteen years have passed, and I am acutely aware that the trees on our planet are in peril even without being tasked to pay attention to the trees this week.
Last summer we saw an unusual number of trees fall. Venerable maple and oak trees toppled across roads and onto people’s houses in our town. I knew my four-year-old granddaughter was aware of this when she asked, “Grandma, why are those trees so clumsy?”
Why indeed. The trees are being stressed by many things, including disease, insects, pollution, soil erosion, increased temperatures, and rising carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Our trees are dying cell by cell.
Today I hopped in my car and drove on asphalt roads to visit my son. I am painfully aware that I own a piece of this problem, and it breaks my heart.
With Love & Energy by the Pond,
Laurel
