Tree Reflection

 

A Tree's Mortal Immortality

It’s very intriguing to me to consider parts of nature, be it the ocean, grass, clouds, or trees, in different modalities; It’s physical body, as a symbol, what it means in different cultural contexts. The idea that a tree could mean so many things is at once powerful and terrifying. There are multitudes to living objects like a flower or tree, which lends us the idea that there are infinite ways of understanding more complex organisms like humans. That isn’t to say a tree isn’t complex, but rather my way of understanding the vastness of reality in a way that considers both the tree and I from an even perspective: We are all descendants of a singular beginning. A tree grows so slowly we plant them for generations past what we will live to see. To something as great as a tree, we live our lives with such haste that they're over before they begin. In the short film Treeline, we learn that a bristlecone pine can live more than 5,000 years. We also learn that, despite their hardiness and ability to persist in the most arid or scant of environments, they are incredibly vulnerable in the beginning of their lives. Many more die than live. Such a strong thing comes from something so small. A lesson in perseverance.

Reading Hesse’s personification of trees spoke to me, specifically the following excerpt: “When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts…Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.” I can’t help but wonder if Hesse thought about the role of a tree in nature outside of the human metaphor, how they are homes for multitudes of creatures; Food for hungry beetles, hideaways for owls and squirrels, protectors of soil that would otherwise be blown away if their root systems weren’t there to hold them down. I like to consider trees like that. Not just shade to sit in, a body to bleed dry of its’ sweetness, something to hollow out and push off the steep edge of a riverbank. A living thing, an ecosystem in itself, one member in a vast family of varying shapes, sizes, and immortality.