Trees
posted in General |If you were a tree, what sort of tree would you be?
This question was always a joke when I was growin up; people poking fun at some sort of ephemeral consciousness-uplifting / soul cleansing. Like psychaitrists, but different. I, however, often ask myself this question, and no, I don’t really know why.
The most recent time, was when I was waiting for Miss B outside school. I like to stand under the tree, under all trees really, and breathe with it; to vision my roots extending down to the water under the surface, and my leaves stretching up for the air and sunlight. And I asked myself this question, and came up with … well, let me preface.
In my youth, I’ve answered myself “a mighty oak.” I’ve always liked the oaks; their strong roots, their tall backs, their ritual symbolism, the protected feeling I get when I am beneath them. I’ve always wanted to be like one, but never really felt myself to be one. I generally followed that with “Well, ok, not a mighty oak. How about a birch tree- one of the first sorts of trees to enter a boggy area and make it safe.” Thinking of myself as inquisitive, eager, rather than slow, magnificient and protective.
And then a time came when I was “one of those scraggly pine trees on the coast, permanently hunched over from the wind, barely clinging onto the rock, growth stunted.” Lightning struck, and I became a barren stump, tall and clean like a giant’s broken femur sticking up from the ground. I toppled slowly, gathering momentum, until I landed with a tooth rattling crash, embedding myself in the muck around me. And then, rot set in; beetles and bacteria; I became a nurse tree. My creative bits returning to the forest floor.
Now, when I ask myself this question (I never really ask it out loud, it’s more of an internal barometer. And I probably would never answer someone straight; you’re seeing into my insides here) I see, as the nurse tree dissolves, new trees are born with the same materials that are decomposing. I still have the same internal parts I had “back a few years ago” but my surroundings are … healthier and more nurturing. I’m a little wary yet of some things, but I’m also planning completely new things; but all of these things are from the same parts of me that I had before, slightly changed and recombined.
