A few weeks ago a friend and I, inspired by our similar responses to Scott Russell Sanders's wonderful essay in Orion magazine called "Mind in the Forest," decided we would try an experiment of finding a particular tree in our respective necks of our woods, hang out with it regularly as the seasons change, and see what kind of relationship began to develop. Here is part of my most recent report, which turned out to be a reflection on a poem of Ranier Maria Rilke as well:
Winter has come here in Norway, with cold, several days of soft snowfall, and sometimes a little wind, more darkness. My own habits are slower to change; I am not leaving my room as easily; I find reason to linger in the house, even beside the low circle of paraffin flame of the little stove in the front hall. (My coat and boots are right there, in the closet.)
So today I began to be an animal in winter, just as light was beginning to fade around 2:30 in the afternoon. I found my good winter gloves under the cake pan (where else?), my boots, vest, jacket, watch cap in the closet, and I set out for my tree. Of course it was there, at trail’s end, in a place long ago—probably 300 years or so—named “the end of the world,” I imagine because the farms and fields ended there; only wilderness—trees—stretched beyond, and one could see far into the distance. “The last before the infinite.” (See below.)
The old birch I had chosen grew there, with another grandfather birch that stood close by and as tall—I would guess 200 feet easily. Not so close that I could reach both with my arms spread, but if I stretch out on the ground (now wet snow) with arms extended I can feel one trunk with my feet, the other with my hands.
Now the fact that strikes me is that I can’t remember which I chose that first time. I have two trees, two hairy grandfather birches, covered with green gray lichen. And I stood with them quietly for a time, perhaps a little like Robinson Jeffers’s image of mankind as
a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone...
On my walk back I thought, this is going to take a very long time, but perhaps there is one way of understanding Rilke’s last lines,
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go.
You—I—we—have as long as it takes, as long as we need. Done with our grasping, our will, even with its—our—meaning—tenderly we will let go.
Garrison Keillor tells us that yesterday was Rilke’s birthday, December 4, 1875. And Keillor also reprints these lines of Rilke, without saying where they came from in his poetry. Wherever, they served to move me from my room, into winter and into the trees, where discovery awaited.
Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from the worn-out door-stone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go.