Walking With Trees

Morning spiders pitch their tents within the wet jagged grass of September; they are moist with dew, shining like phosphorescent space orbs, luminous lace huts, grouped like communes in the low-lying field. I walk among them feeling grace, privy to view such sacred encampments. The light has covertly shifted, and comes thru my windows at altered angles, no longer hitting my porch at the anticipated time; subtle shifts, that seem to be commanding my consideration. The slight and the obvious intertwined in a whirling dance that makes them appear as one. Summer is taking its last bow and in its wake I recollect being a child, deep in July, lying in my little bed with my head near an open window. I would listen to the soothing sounds of the southern night and swear I could actually hear the twinkle of fireflies in flight; a sound closely akin to falling snow. In those days, we had no air conditioning, and were none the worse for the lack of knowledge of its ability to lull us into a world that would be hard to escape or survive outside of. I knew my father was in the house and there was peace. I knew my mother was in the house and there was anguish. Even then, I knew the contradiction and I instinctively chose to travel somewhere in the middle; not by my own astuteness, but from something I heard outside that window. I knew there was an answer, something that could bring them together; (the dark and the light, the male and the female) that to fully live, one must let go of life, let go of the need of anything, and everything would be present immediately; that everything I would ever require was just outside my window. It seems I fell asleep like Rip Van Winkle and in the passage of time I would remember this as a vague dream, a fleeting passage in a book that I had read some time or other, an idealistic fantasy born of childhood and magical summer nights. Now, by conscious choice and fully awake, I walk the day with a dog as my sole companion. I nest in the night with a cat as my Muse and observe the activities of fish and fowl, trees and forest creatures; the profundity of their presence ever amazing me -- and I hear fireflies once again. Something that began as a faint whisper, years ago, has sallied forth and through the humble repetition of its incantation, it has built to a crescendo that I cannot ignore or accredit as idle musings. Summer gives way to fall and the woods are filled with cave-like clusters of darkness, surrounded by brilliant light, and amid the constant drone of bees and bugs and distant disgruntled crows there is a silence so still that it sets up a humming vibration in the core of my being; something gripped so tight and choking that it may explode to find its freedom. This is more than a season in flux. The small tributary that fed the lake, dried up from summer’s heat. I was vexed and inadvertently, in passing, said a prayer for water; overnight it has begun to run freely once again -- and there has been no rain. Visiting coons have an angst and desperateness about them that seems to go beyond the normal pre-winter scavenging for food and fat; “subtle shifts that seem to be commanding my consideration.” I am here, in this natural environment, more than I am not. And it is a “living, breathing organism that I respond to”, as if I were a cell in its bowels. And like the “slight and the obvious intertwined” in a dance, it also responds to me. We are irremediable in our connection; what harm I bring upon this earth, I bring upon myself, what nourishing I offer is reciprocated a thousand fold. It’s abundance restrained only by the un-natural world -- that, motivated by greed, fear, and competition for its gifts. I feel fall’s fingers, gloved in sparkling days and just–so-perfect nights, as they caress the forest ever so slightly; as if to entice, deceive or lull one into false complacency, hiding the hard hand of winter. And I instinctively know it has begun -- the call of the Earth, the Oceans and the Trees; growing ever louder so that more will hear and heed. Have we been driven like witless cattle into a false grazing field, and are we “the worse for the lack of knowledge of its ability to lull us into a world that will be hard to escape or survive outside of.” This poem, written months before hurricane Katrina: This is most divine, this time with no time, this un-time, this undoing of all done. The sum of all being nothing, the nothing being all. I call to spirits and reason, for there is treason in the gulf. It is rough being human, harder being humane.. the mundane and the exalted halting right before my eyes.. and I hear cries, Let it be, set it free, let it go. An ancient coral-reef bridge in Aruba has crumbled. The grand reefs of Australia weep in waves that embrace our feet. I do not need to hear of tsunamis that wipe out entire civilizations or hurricanes that leave millions homeless; I know it, simply by virtue of walking with trees.