When I Am Among the Trees

The Tousled Green Crowd

The tousled green crowd

of a tree enjoys its bath

in wind, not water.

I Am a Tree

I eat the sun, I drink the light.

I am a conjurer. My sugar is self-sacrifice.

I cut my arm to feed my leg.

I am waiting for nothing, needing for nothing. I am an army, I am the mother of them all,

I can regenerate.

I clone a nation from my foot.

I am a country of one.

I am a family; I am a household.

I have skin and I can bruise and I can bleed, and I can cry. I make my friends. We are connected.

We are inseparable. We grow intertwined.

We share the sky, we are agreed.

I can give, and I can care for.

I’ve got other mouths to feed.

They need me.

I am a tree. I know secrets that you will never know. I channel lighting. I see in color.

I make the air you need to grow.

I’m not a man, I’m not a woman. Surprisingly I’m both.

And when I know that I must die

I put the best of me back into the ground. I stretch for miles and miles and miles. And let’s not forget my leaves:

Clouds of green.

— Majel Connery

The Tree Wise Men

My friend Jim Hampton has a strong affinity for trees, so this morning I asked him what he would say are the wise qualities of a tree. 

He replied, “The immediate words that come to mind are: ancient, sage, quiet, patient, watchful, constant and protective.

“To be more descriptive, I think of something that is wise and powerful, yet discerning. They patiently observe without interfering. Taking in our behaviors so they may increase their wisdom which leads to greater, superior silence.”

“I’m curious as to why you asked.”

I replied, “It’s something I thought of while walking George past my personal ‘world tree’ this morning. You gave good answers. I always think of solidity — the immovable trunk — and yet suppleness, branches that bend with the breeze. And they are satisfied just with sunlight.”

Consider the Tree

Consider the tree outside the door. Although it serves as a resting place for birds, it doesn't make an effort to call those that come. Nor does it care whether those that leave return. When a person's mind is like the tree's, they no longer oppose the Tao [the Way].

— Lung-ya

Lightning in Winter

The line is mine; the painting is by Rachel Klecker Clegg.

The naked limbs of a sycamore tree are the frozen lightning of winter.

What the Tree Can Teach

At the end of our block stands a vaulting, venerable sycamore I call Yggdrasil. 
Walking toward the rising sun, the beagle and I visit the tree each morning. I put a hand out to its emphatic solidity and lean there, looking up and down the road that runs past.
Reaching, it drinks rain and sun, tranquil, living, enduring. Not perfect, it is nevertheless complete in itself. Perhaps no person can truly personify stoicism, but this tree, with its scarred and mottled bark, somehow seems to embody the principle, offering its mute lesson to heedless hurry-pasters for days, decades. 
In Ch’an and Zen Teaching, Lu K’uan Yu wrote, “Once a monk asked of Joshu, ‘Tell me what is the ultimate truth of Zen Buddhism?’ “Josh replied, ‘The Cypress tree in the courtyard.’

“The whole world is the Cypress Tree. Joshu is the Cypress Tree. There is, in short, nothing other than the Awareness of the Cypress Tree, because at this metaphysical zero-point, Being itself in its very non-differentiation is illuminating itself as the Cypress Tree, unique and universal at the same time.”

The tales tell how the Buddha gained enlightenment sitting in the shelter of a tree. "It is the Axis Mundi," wrote Karen Armstrong in Buddha. "the still point of calm where human beings, in many world myths, encounter the Real and the Unconditioned."
Maybe that’s what Odin tortured himself to learn, pierced by his own spear, hanging there from the world tree for those nine days and nine nights. Maybe that’s what the leaves whispered in his ear. The secret of tranquil endurance.