An Elegy for Trees

When I was a child and imagined being a grown-up, there were two vocations about which I dreamed: I would be an architect or a forest ranger. The architect I imagined was a designer of homes, each of three sides, surrounding a capacious patio, looking out upon wild greensward, bushes, granite and tall trees. My family moved often during those years, and I think I was designing a home where we would stay.

As a forest ranger I lived at the top of a tower surrounded on all sides by endless forest, and my task was to watch keenly for the danger of fire.

Both of these visions of a future life looked out upon trees. For as long as I can remember, I have felt a deep kinship: climbed them, talked with them, swung under their boughs, softened in their shade, sat reading against their trunks. Trees have been my brethren. No surprise, surely, that I find myself living in a community called The Redwoods.

 

And no surprise, either, to find my wise age-mate Parker Palmer discovering later in life a similar kinship. I have no doubt of the answer to the question he asks himself: "I wonder if trees photosynthesize the soul as well as sunlight?"

 

An Elegy for Trees

by Parker J. Palmer

Some of you will wonder what took me so long, but in recent years I’ve developed a deep appreciation for trees.

I used to take trees for granted. But these days I know that sitting in their presence for a while will leave me refreshed and renewed. I wonder if trees photosynthesize the soul as well as sunlight?

Part of what calls to me is the complexity and beauty of trees. As Annie Dillard wrote, if you want to understand how complex a tree is, try making a scale model of one! As for beauty, few sights can rival yellow leaves dancing in the wind against the backdrop of a “blue true dream of sky,” to quote e.e. cummings.

But most of all, I’m drawn to trees because of something W.S. Merwin says in this lovely poem — the way they slowly and quietly cycle through the seasons “as though nothing had happened” while our individual and collective lives whirl madly around them.

 

Elegy for a Walnut Tree

by W.S. Merwin

Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world