"I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate. For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to. "- Treebeard (From Tolkien's The Two Towers)
During our round of golf, we came across four enormous trees that were totally uprooted in the storm, and literally countless others that were split or severely damaged, with huge limbs being severed from the trunk, now laying lifelessly on the ground below.
Photo by Pat Karpinski
Most of us have been confronted with the loss of plants, shrubbery (or in my case just about anything I have tried to grow in my garden this summer) and other flora. Losing our greenery to disease, drought, weather or incompetence is frustrating for sure. But typically these emotions are not comparable to what we feel at the loss of a large old tree. These are beings that have been around for years--before our time, before the time of our houses and dwellings. Many pre-dated the shopping malls, wide, multi-lane paved roads and even the advent of automobiles. If they could talk, the stories they could tell...
I am not a pantheist, but trees, especially the big gnarly ones, are like mystical old souls. Who among us has not, at some point or other, felt a sort of spiritual connection to a tree? Perhaps it is because of our familiarity with great children's books such as The Giving Tree, or reading about the heroic and wise tree-like Ents in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Trees aren't always the good guys in literature, such as those grumpy trees who were brought so vividly to life in Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz--throwing their own apples at Dorothy and her gang. Still, it never seemed far fetched or ridiculous to read about trees in literature as if they were creatures personified.
Photo by Pat Karpinski
As a child, I spent many hours in trees. I was a climber, as were many of my childhood pals. We had an enormous old apple tree abutting our home that I used to love to climb and hide in--it was too large to access from the ground, so I had to climb out of the second story window, onto a little roof and then onto the tree. The thick foliage kept me hidden, and I could observe, without being observed, what was happening below me. My tree was a friend--not a peer, but more like an older, wiser companion, who was about the business of protecting, shielding and sheltering me. I spent hours alone sitting in trees, and yet, it was never a lonely experience. There was something comforting about perching on my favorite branch of my favorite tree. It was an experience of solitude that was good and safe.
Photo by Pat Karpinski
The golf course felt strange and disordered today, with so many of its guardians altered or felled. It was an alien place. Even the wildlife seemed confused by it all. We witnessed two enormous hawks close up--one hopping agitatedly from one very low branch to another on a very damaged tree, and the other, perhaps its mate, walking on the ground as if he or she was looking for something--perhaps a nest? Or a favorite roosting place, if hawks can have such a thing. How many nests were destroyed? How many creatures were confused at the sudden loss of their homes?
Some of the trees destroyed in this storm had survived, doubtless, for hundreds of years. Obviously, new trees can be planted, but none of us will be here to see them achieve the venerable old age and status of those trees who, as if accepting that their time was at an end, released their hold on the soil and on life, and slowly and majestically toppled to the earth.
Photo by Pat Karpinski
Photo by Pat Karpinski
Photo by Pat Karpinski
No comments:
Post a Comment