Primal Forests - Ancient Trees
The Exploration, Preservation, Spirit, and Aesthetics of Nature
Tree Grief
Posted to the ENTS (Eastern Native Tree Society). It is the first time I wrote out my story of the ash tree in Bellbrook. Also includes a revision of a poem several years old. Robert Leverett, a authority on Eastern Old Growth, enjoyed the poem.
One reply said, no doubt the tree speaks to you still.
As a newer member of ENTS, I have been browsing many posts, and have been heartened by the blend of science, spirit, insight, and aesthetics I find here. It suits me just fine. I have been loathe even in the day to day grind of field science to let go of the wonder and euphoric consciousness that fills me as I move through forests. It is apparently not a unique sentiment.
In the spirit of the Aesthetics Project here, I wanted to share a poem I wrote about a tree and also its foreground.I had the experience as a child of a particular ancient and marvelous tree in my life, and to this day I feel that it befriended me, versus the other way around. It was a massive white ash, more than 3 feet in diamter and 80 feet tall, and one of several phenomenal trees left by the developer of our 1950s neighborhood, a mass of ranch style houses that has obviously been chopped out of a very old forest. I suppose I was lucky to even have such trees around my suburban home. I became aware of the uniqueness of these trees at a very early age, maybe seven or eight, when the following encounter began.
The giant ash began appearing in my dreams, and from that I began to focus on it, wandering to it almost daily, sitting beneath it but also some distance away where I could see it in its entirety. In each observation, I felt it speaking to me, not in words, but in a vision of my life and with a great flow of encouragement, love and inspiration. From that single childhood friendship, with a single tree, grew a lifetime work and personal mission, culminating in a passionate career in ecological restoration and forest ecology.
I returned to see it as an adult in my thirties. Where it had stood, there was only the manicured turf of a lawn. Each of the other old trees was gone. Stricken with grief as if a person I knew had died, I wandered away, and from that grief came a poem.
Dream Tree
Pain begins the seeing bare
the former place of life
No solid strong sage to hopes or dreams rises there
no loved ancient
Lifter of eyes and heart
Only a scalped scene-Like a historic battlefield
The calm lawn belying life cut down In the prime of vigor and beauty
And solitude for the one befriending thosethought removable,
objects,
annoyances,
by others.
A.L.M.
One reply said, no doubt the tree speaks to you still.
As a newer member of ENTS, I have been browsing many posts, and have been heartened by the blend of science, spirit, insight, and aesthetics I find here. It suits me just fine. I have been loathe even in the day to day grind of field science to let go of the wonder and euphoric consciousness that fills me as I move through forests. It is apparently not a unique sentiment.
In the spirit of the Aesthetics Project here, I wanted to share a poem I wrote about a tree and also its foreground.I had the experience as a child of a particular ancient and marvelous tree in my life, and to this day I feel that it befriended me, versus the other way around. It was a massive white ash, more than 3 feet in diamter and 80 feet tall, and one of several phenomenal trees left by the developer of our 1950s neighborhood, a mass of ranch style houses that has obviously been chopped out of a very old forest. I suppose I was lucky to even have such trees around my suburban home. I became aware of the uniqueness of these trees at a very early age, maybe seven or eight, when the following encounter began.
The giant ash began appearing in my dreams, and from that I began to focus on it, wandering to it almost daily, sitting beneath it but also some distance away where I could see it in its entirety. In each observation, I felt it speaking to me, not in words, but in a vision of my life and with a great flow of encouragement, love and inspiration. From that single childhood friendship, with a single tree, grew a lifetime work and personal mission, culminating in a passionate career in ecological restoration and forest ecology.
I returned to see it as an adult in my thirties. Where it had stood, there was only the manicured turf of a lawn. Each of the other old trees was gone. Stricken with grief as if a person I knew had died, I wandered away, and from that grief came a poem.
Dream Tree
Pain begins the seeing bare
the former place of life
No solid strong sage to hopes or dreams rises there
no loved ancient
Lifter of eyes and heart
Only a scalped scene-Like a historic battlefield
The calm lawn belying life cut down In the prime of vigor and beauty
And solitude for the one befriending thosethought removable,
objects,
annoyances,
by others.
A.L.M.
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