1. Prologue: Traditions are Metaphors
Have you ever noticed? Let me tell you what I mean.
It all starts with a war on (Christmas) trees
It’s December 1st and I’m seeing evergreens strapped to car roofs. If it were any other month of the year, the frequency of this phenomenon might be considered strange. However, ‘tis the season. A much beloved tradition is underway and trees are taking center stage.
For one month the basketball court at the local Boys and Girls club becomes a holiday popup shop. Specialty trees are trucked in, arranged and priced to sell. I saunter through the milieu on my way to Spy Pond, navigating the crowd. It’s a joyous if busy atmosphere.
The fragrance of fresh cut fir fills my nostrils. Sappy sweet memories come flooding back to me.
The scent sends me swirling, spellbound, back to childhood, draping limbs with colorful strings of lights, hanging ornaments, the paper wrapped presents ripe for the ripping below. Another draw and I’m transported again, cutting au natural in the Pryor Mountains of Montana, $5 forest service permit secured, helping Dad pick out the ugliest sapling on the hillside.
The sense of smell has a powerful pull, so I have noticed.
As the adorning tree tradition climaxes on that special eve, axed are the trees in a tragic twist. In the days since January 1st, the once prized evergreens now lay like dull carcasses, unwanted on that little patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street (affectionately referred to around here as the hell-strip). I walk past, bemused by the implicity of it all. The same picture window worthy trees once so proudly displayed are now trash. Rubbish to be hauled far away. Out of sight and out of mind. Curtains.
Until next year.
1. It's all circles, cycles, orbits
Oscillations. Each spring trees embark on their own tradition. As the sun lathers these northern lattitudes in light, trees unwrap their buds, gifts from their former selves to the present. They flower, fruit, and unroll fresh green leaves that tinsel our days toward summer. A necessary color and character add to that channel between the horizon and the sky.
The air swells and becomes flush with additional dimensionality. There is pollen, sure. And music. Hummingbirds arrive, song birds too. Butterflies, bees, crickets. Flowers reach up and out. Earth pulses with renewal. Sit long enough beneath the branches of an oak and notice the subtle language of chimes, the harmonic interplay between atmosphere and earth.
New England’s fleeting summer season is not to be missed. With the sun peaking and beaming bright, lush green trees cast great cooling shadows that recondition the air, offer shade, a deep reprieve to breath, relax. Above all, a spectacular setting for life.
And right when it seems like we could go on like this happily forever, the composition shifts. Almost indistinctly at first. On an early September evening, right as the sun sets, an unmistakable crispness arrives on the wind. Photosynthesis slows and the deep greens begin to drain. Together, we tilt and tumble gently into autumn. The maples go first. A signal tree, every patch of forest has one. Leaf by leaf this great deciduous forest (the leafiest place on earth!) blurs to yellows and orange, reds and brown and down fall the leaves. An unfolding, an outpouring. Summer’s brevity is but an opening act to autumn’s brilliance. I fall for it every time.
My eyes witness a beautiful splendor that vanquishes time and stirs deeply my being.
2. In parting
Gifts are given. Nature abounds. The tart sugar of a wild blueberry sends my tastebuds soaring. Acorns drop from above. Hickory nuts go careening off the slanted roof of the garage and onto my little back porch. Squirrels, those tireless and spiritual caretakers of oak are busy caching, planning forests for the next generation, as they have for eons. Bluejays coordinate their movements, delivering messages from just beyond, between. Geese pattern the sky as they arrive to their traditional overland locations. Some never left. More arrive each day.
South is a relative direction.
Waste not. Steadily, desiccated leaves are reintegrated by a complex mix of physical forces and delicate breezes, cozying up to the soft earth one by one, wrapping the flora in a homey blanket of oaken down, offering communal warmth and habitat ahead of the deep dark slide.
3. Then, like a buzzsaw, the sun sets at 4:30 pm
Landscapers arrive, another tradition around these parts. They roll up like squadrons intent on making their presence known. Their decaled trucks haul trailers full of thudding equipment; mowers, blowers, trimmers and all kinds of strapped and loaded weaponry that go bouncing over these potholed residential streets. Yard to yard they swarm executing their lawn care service agreements. They are contractually obligated to carry enough gasoline to burn the city down but instead aim their artillery toward the ground. Like assassins with a job to do, no leaf is left unturned. They sweep the place.
Air is weaponized. The land is scraped. Earth laid bare. The sound-scape is obliterated in one mile radiuses that echo and collide into each other. The same dazzling post-card worthy foliage is blasted by hundred mile an hour fervent, violent, unnatural forces of air. Exhaust fumes belch forth from one end, fine particulate dust is kicked up by the other.
The fodder kingdom, insects and the like, are considered inconsequential blowback, that is, if their purposeful lives are considered at all.
Crumpled leaves are stuffed into brown paper sacks and stacked like body bags out with the trash. Again, the trash. Or, sucked into Cessna engine powered vacuum trucks to be mulched, presumably, and resold to the same eager customers in the spring.
Day after day attacks are launched by mercurial mercenary crews. A steady decibalic drone pervades the air. Where one ends another begins. So it goes, on and on.
Disrupting. Displacing. Disgracing.
Until ultimately,
4. I am incensed
I cannot see. I cannot hear. I cannot think. I can only feel in one dimension and I am enraged, engulfed by the hypocrisy of it all. The sheer vapid waste at hand day after day. Year after year. Moment after moment missed and for what? It would be ironic, but irony requires attention.
Does no one else see it, what is lost?
How, on earth,
have we talked ourselves into a dilemma that does not exist?
Then I remember.
A calm moment in Menotomy Rocks Park. Precious winter sunlight splinters through the holding-steady stems of a white oak.
Jan 8th, 2024, Massachusetts
5. Seeing another way
Look, the forest, the trees, look.
If seeing is believing then look, no, further.
A little perspective goes a long way. There is at least this much. It’s all around us, at all times, this present. It’s all up to interpretation.
/~/~/
I am developing a practice
of noticing.
Notice, assess, react.
Awareness can expand
, contract.
Notice.
So I am.
/~/~/I call it crabgod (noun/verb). That’s just my name for it. A reminder, always, that crabgod is in the noticing:
The more you look, the more you see.
And, never fight.
So what’s in a name? It’s simple really, a tradition old as time.
Let me tell you what I mean.