The Magnitude of Trees

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at Prairie Hill. Yet I'm told that a blog needs to post at least every two weeks. So here's something I wrote awhile back but never posted. Nice to have something like this as a back-up! 

 On this January Sunday morning, I had the pleasure of waiting at the front of my home for a ride to Friends Meeting. There was a thick fog, the temperature was mild, and it had not decided to start raining yet. The trees around our community stood out exquisitely from the fog. They had beautiful, intricate forms, all different shapes set against the horizon. I could have stood there for far longer, marveling at the beauty. And then when I got to Friends Meeting, the tree theme continued. As I was settling into the silence, I looked around me and found that there was wood everywhere. The benches we were sitting on were made of wood, old fashioned plain sturdy benches with wooden pegs to hold them together. And the floor under my feet was made of wooden boards too. I felt nestled in wood, seeing the trees' growth rings in front of me, reminding me that I was held by something once living, leaving its mark and identity for us. I felt gratitude for being surrounded by the trees felled to build this room. And just feeling cozy and grateful led me to notice other things I was grateful for. Gratitude tends to build on itself! Everywhere I looked, there were things to be admired, starting with my own body: my hands that could do all kinds of things, my eyes that can still see things, my ears that could hear the messages in Meeting, my body that can still get me around. I felt whole and good, and grateful that I could sit quietly with other people and let my spirit lift.

Then, after getting home and eating a delicious lunch, I decided to go on a walk. It was not raining, still just foggy and damp. I drove to one of my favorite places, Oakland Cemetery. It sits right on the edge of a large wild area, with paths that crisscross the whole acreage. I followed a path through the forest, down the hill and around a curve to a bench right at the edge of the thickest woods. There too, I felt the trees. This was their territory.  They stretched high and wide above me and dwarfed us walkers. The energy of Nature was in charge here. People could make trails and put in benches, but we were tiny and insignificant compared to the rest of the wilderness. As I sat at the foot of so many trees, I again felt gratitude for them, for their own kind of wisdom, for their ability to grow and maneuver in the world. I looked into their high branches, studied the birds' nests and squirrels' nests, watched how the branches moved in the wind, and marveled at the beauty of their canopies against the sky. 

Then I got up and walked further along the path until I came to another bench. This time the bench was at the edge of the woods, a bit away from the trees. I could see the whole sky full of slowly moving puffy clouds clear to the horizon, like a soft blanket covering the earth. It's a sky that gives us rain, a sky that is full of air we can breathe. We depend upon the oxygen which the trees give off as a by-product, and I thought about how fortunate we are to have air to breathe here on the earth's surface. We are protected by an atmosphere wrapped around our planet, and green growth plays such an important part for animals like us who need to breathe the right mix of air.

There was a puddle in front of this second bench, and the variety of prints in the mud told an interesting tale. There were shoe prints and dog prints, and then at one side there were a lot of deer prints. As I was sitting, a doe walked slowly up the path toward me and we silently stared at each other for many moments. It was a still point where time seemed to stop for a bit. 

There were also prints of bird feet in the puddle, and other prints I couldn't identify. The bird prints reminded me to look up, and once my attention focused on the tops of the trees, I saw birds flying to and fro. One had a red patch on his head, and others were less showy. As long as I was quiet, they chattered back and forth to each other, another reminder that we are surrounded by a world of living things, whether we take the trouble to notice that or not. I returned home full of gratitude for my experiences this day, and especially for the world of life that surrounds trees. The tree has become my hero for the day!