Tree School
November 3, 2009
A TREE is movement that never quite moves. Its roots protruding from the ground, an oak seems as if it is just about to take a step. Its limbs bare of leaves, the tulip poplar reaches and points and gesticulates. A row of old Japanese maples near where I live is effeminate and expressive. It is as if a choreographer had once come by and said, “Okay, girls. Arms up! That’s right. Now wave. Wave as if you were billowing sails!” When the choreographer left, the trees held their billowing sails in place, awaiting his return.
A tree is movement frozen in place, even when its limbs sway in the wind. But that is not all. A tree is wisdom.
I was raised by human beings, but I was also raised by trees: oak mothers and fathers; poplar siblings; maple aunts and hemlock uncles; pine and spruce cousins, plus a host of extended arboreal relatives whom I cannot classify. I consider them family because they have that essential feature of all relatives. There is always the mysterious feeling that they know me.
I was tree-taught and tree-tutored. I have gone to tree school, leaning against the windowsill on winter nights when there was a full moon and the ancient oaks beyond by window were clarified by the light; walking through their blazing hallways as they dropped their leaves on my head in fall; and resting on spring days against their rough and tender bark. They taught me their alphabet. They taught me tree arithmetic and tree geography, tree philosophy and tree history, tree logic and tree literature. The long and complex story of tree evolution, starting with a single seed, was laid out in detail. Where did the seed come from, I wondered. “Haven’t you heard?” the trees said. “Haven’t you heard?”
I would have to un-learn some of my human learning. I would have to take things like a tree. Root and limb. Upward and downward at the same time. There comes a point when you cannot argue with a tree, so stubborn and unyielding is tree truth.
When it came time to raise my own children, I knew we would have to leave the city for good. The suburban development where we live was built about 50 years ago. The woman who sold the land to the builders told them, “You can change everything but the trees. They must stay.”
Society has progressed and gotten smarter. But I will learn great things as long as there’s a tree nearby.
