Reflections in a Winter Forest by Sara Wright

Yesterday’s welcome sun and warm temperatures had me out the door to lay down another round of ashes before the next storm. After packing down our woodland paths with snowshoes we were off to our favorite forest. I had planned to look for liverworts but as usual nature had other plans nudging me to note which trees might be photosynthesizing  around these forest edges. At any given moment there are thousands of interactions between tree bark and ki’s environment that most of us take for granted. If you pay attention to bark you may, like me, develop a deep respect for the unparalleled beauty and for the protective skin of every tree. Especially during the winter months.

We know that bark protects the tree from insects and other damage, and the thick ridged bark of older pines or hemlocks also holds moisture in ki’s fissures as well as providing creaturely homes.

I feel compelled to stop to run my hands over these thick white pine trunks in gratitude and awe for their existence. I do the same thing at home in my modest sanctuary, but here the pines are older like the ones that once entirely covered the mountain behind me, all the way to the ledges…I remind myself that the waxy needles on conifers also photosynthesize on warm sunny days.

I came to the mountains because I was in love with trees and to study bears (note: it was five years before I met my first bear. In our time the bears said, not yours. The two, trees and bears belong together since the black bear is a prey animal that must have trees to climb for safety and to outwit all but human predators.

 During those first years I roamed through fen and forest, old forgotten fields, awed by moon tide springs, marshes, and seeps believing that I had found a paradise. Bears appeared like magic when the time was right and stayed for many years.

 Now I come to this forest in remembrance (requiem) feeling the deepest respect and gratitude for those who cared enough to save this piece of land in time.

Hemlock Hollow is not a winter option for Coalie and me in this frozen world though I hear my name being called, but there is still so much to see.

The young beeches capture my attention because their wizened leaves are rustling and still attached to petioles offering subtle wheat -like contrast to winter white (marcescence). These youngsters with smooth slender trunks are photosynthesizing today because the temperatures are mild, but if they are positioned to receive sun thin skinned trunks of any size can eat light when temperatures are below freezing. Poplars and birches do the same, along with red maples who line the recovering mixed forest edges. I note the presence of liverworts, but getting to them is another matter, and I am not willing to suffer a potential fall. I think of trees breathing out  oxygen rich air for everyone around them without ever asking for anything in return. The air is sweeter here because of terpenes (chemicals). This is my idea of love – giving without expectation.  

Reciprocity or relationship develops between humans and trees when they are seen for who they are.  And this is when it gets interesting because trees are ready to communicate with us in their language not ours and most commonly when we are in a loving relationship with them. The challenge is to learn how to listen, develop patience, and then keep an open mind. Carrying an awareness of expectations is a must. Maybe the hardest part is learning to trust  because our culture tells us that trees don’t talk. In truth, Trees are our Elders in every sense of the word, yet we are destroying them as fast as we can. A dangerous thing to do. I spent so many years as an ecologist/naturalist advocating for trees, and of course I still do, but now I have less of an agenda because I know I can do nothing to save them. They know it too.

Someday, in this forest other trees will replace the ones that are being lost naturally, making the transition easier as an old earthen cycle ends and a new one begins. But even if all trees are destroyed as is happening elsewhere, trees will birth themselves again in unimaginable new shapes, colors and skins.

 Why? All nature has memory and cyclic returns are normal. Humans don’t live long enough to have these experiences unless they follow the seasons as we used to do and as I still do today… sooner or later those that engage will feel some sense of cyclic connection, have a dream or vision, be surprised by a single word that appears unbidden, be enveloped in scent, become obsessed by one kind of tree. I could go on here.

 For too many years I didn’t trust what I felt. My personal and cultural conditioning still wants me to feel separate from nature because then these forces can control what I think.

As Coalie sniffs some wild grasses near my favorite winter seep a story that plant ecologist Monica Gagliano tells pops into my head. While walking alone and witnessing the desecration of a forest in Italy the cutting- edge scientist started weeping. So much pain. When she heard a voice, she thought she might be crazy. The voice was clear: No need to cry; everything is precisely as it’s supposed to be.

The Earth, or what I would call the Powers of Place, had spoken. Others might call this voice the genius loci.

In my experience LOVE is the glue that allows for this kind of communication to occur between humans and the rest of nature.

Additionally, some places seem to attract these spirits that might also be called bio-(chemical) fields?  I remember being in Assisi Italy at a Jungian conference while having extraordinary experiences that I simply couldn’t process. I was almost forty and studying to become an analyst. Fortunately, I had a friend who happened to be an Episcopal priest who assured me that I wasn’t crazy when I spilled some of these unearthly (to me) experiences to him on my return. John sent me to William James and then told me to follow nature’s nudges. The wisest council I ever received. When this man died, he became a bear.

  Some scientists like Monica are engaged in research that indicates that trees synchronize bioelectrical signals, anticipate solar eclipses hours before they happen, with older trees communicating with younger trees who have not had this experience before. This kind of experiment suggests that forests not only have memory but act as interconnected systems with both a personal collective intelligence. Research is also indicating that the more regular cycles of the sun and moon and to some degree other cosmic elements effect all trees and by extension the rest of nature including us. Conventional western science claims it doesn’t have enough proof

 Curiously the Indigenous peoples I know and the ones I studied with in the Amazon take this kind of interconnection for granted because all living beings on earth and in the sky are their relatives.

Up until the last 500 years it was assumed that all nature was alive and communication between species was a given if one was in right relationship with ki as an individual or a whole. Another ‘both and’.

There are a number of old Italian folktales (Calvino) about a very very ancient woman who operates inside and outside of time, and has memory of everything that has ever happened. She has witnessed nature’s cycles come and go but because the circle has no end there is always a return. What is lost will come again. And in a few of Calvino’s fairy tales this old woman  sits on a rock surrounded by water riding herself of fleas.  A young girl comes to help her and is rewarded.  The bugs are gone. Another of Calvino’s folktales has this very very old woman repeating the exact same words that Monica heard as she wept in a decimated forest after completing her groundbreaking research on tree communication. It wasn’t until she told a colleague what had happened that he informed Monica that there was an Italian fairy tale where an old old woman – older than time – used exactly the same words to stem the pain.

No need to cry; everything is precisely as it’s supposed to be.

As I repeat this phrase in my mind, I am struck by lightning. I hear that voice in Hemlock Hollow. Every single time I am there. I am taken in or absorbed by a great peace that I never had words for until now. This illumination stops me dead. Coalie is impatient to move on.

It’s getting late, long shadows are reflected on sparkling snow and shimmer over the seep. I am not sure why I am so drawn to these openings in the earth’s crust beyond the obvious – to look for tracks. There is something about these open waters when every living thing is encased in snow or ice that calls to me insistently. I tell the seep that I will be listening, and maybe when the time is right, I’ll learn more. We’ll be back I say.I take a moment to thank the forest before we reach the car reluctant to head home.