As a child, I could not have anticipated that my bone-deep connection and predilection for trees would simultaneously be a constant stream of grief, a swath of sadness cutting through the land of my life.

Trees have modelled for me the art of being rooted while reaching—the practice of stillness in the most violent storms. Through trees, I’ve developed a striving to mimic their community’s intricate and vast knit–giving and receiving, knowing I cannot survive without deep-rooted support. Trees have bore witness to the moments of my life, be they glorious summit moments, dank underbelly shame moments and all the shade between. Trees are an essence, a force that raised me as a child. Continue to raise me as a woman. Root me as a human. They are my only constant.

 

And so I wept today. The tears spiced with bitterness and vengeance. Yesterday I heard the jaws and fangs of a machine up the hill; I tried to be tone-deaf to the weapons of mass deforestation.

 

The first evidence of my entwinement with trees is captured in a photograph. As a toddler, I wandered off from a family gathering. Out of sight for a few moments. Discovered around the broad backside of an oak—a wee contented acorn with a white bonnet and pink sweater nestled between two thick knuckled roots. Even then, I knew trees knew me. Would hold me.

 

And so I wept today. Traversing a blank canvas of fresh snow on a beloved trail that weaves up the hill, I heard my wisdom voice standing sturdy and quiet like a cedar in the center of my being. It bade me…don’t go up there, my girl. It is done. I did not listen.

 

And then there was the time of my first running away—to the neighbors 200 yards down the road. Old Mrs Convey’s lilac tree, its delicate branches bowing under the soft lavender clusters of blooms caressing my eight-year-old anxiousness. I was running away from being a disappointment. My mother on her way home from a parent-teacher intercession—Melanie does not apply herself, talks too much, is given to distraction—such would be my life until I learned how to turn these flaws into flight. I never pass by a lilac in bloom without thinking of Mrs Convey or feeling the mauve tinge of being a disappointment.

 

And so I wept today. I have never stood at the safe edge of a battlefield, a voyeur of carnage. But I feel it now. The trail I love has is ravaged, the earth gouged. The trees taken as prisoners of a one-sided war. A siege against the defenceless. Broken branches are strewn, limbs flung far from their bodies, and jagged stumps protrude through the snow and mud—like fractured femurs and clavicles puncturing skin. I want to lay my body down, spread my arms, press my cheek against this pillaged piece of earth. Soothe the state of shock, the trembling I feel from Mother Earth coming up through my shins. The trees I wove through by feel in the dark. Gone. The trees against which I rested my weary head. Gone. The trees I watered with tears from time to time. Gone. The skinny misshapen tree I adorned with a turkey feather to help it feel loved. She is gone. They are all gone.

 

 

And then there were the elms and walnut that hemmed the river of my childhood. A river, brown, opaque– home. In winter, the steep snowbank down to the brown water drifted over, crafting cornices just the right depth to catch a child and bury them in magic. My father would line his children up on the muscular arm of the elm–feathers on a bronco–and bounce the limb until every last child tumbled like colourful giggling berries into the snow below.

 

And so I wept today. The new neighbour bought this majestically forested land from a dying man for a cheap song. And turned it into a barren clear-cut battlefield for an operatic profit. The bible or the men who wrote it command us, Love thy neighbour, and They know not what they do. The former seems impossible, the latter—unadulterated bullshit. I am not given to live life by biblical guidance. It smacks of original patriarchy. I am a devotee of lyrics, a parishioner in the cathedral of music that moves with time, and today; hands clasped over my mouth barely restraining my banshee scream of death, my mind howls a song line—All of that karma coming back around. Do what you do, I cannot help you now.

 

And then there is the cedar who greets me each morning. Grandmother. My Matriarch. Her waist as generous as her wisdom, no way for my fingers to find each other in our embrace. No way for my frazzled thoughts to remain unsmoothed at her feet. Leaving the wreckage up the hillside—the pillage–I return to her, full of fury and damnation for the destroyers. And as I press my forehead into her wrinkled trunk, she will have none of it. None of my curses. None of my hatred. To her, it is chaff, useless and unworthy. I weep apologies for my neighbour…he knows not what he does. She will have none of that, either. Her silence is as far-reaching as her roots. I slide my back down her trunk to be caught—held—between two thick-knuckled roots. I am a sobbing inconsolable acorn. Until my cells hear her speaking and they pique their ears, they are pulled and elongated just as the moon lengthens the tide.

Settle, she says.

Do not waste your time on what is gone; she guides.

What has come to pass–do not waste your essence on the illusion of lack. Stop your crying and start your thanking. Gratitude for what remains will help it thrive.

It is then, and only then my toddler clarity is restored.

I see what is, what exists, what grows, what bides its time, waiting to greet me in the next season. I am reminded of the fairy ring of pale mushrooms that will silently barge through the soil not far from where I sit when Autumn comes. The emerald mosses and crisp lichens clinging to the cedars, plump from Spring rain. Spruce needles baked by summer sun, sending a citrus bloom into the air.

Looking up, I see that her web of branches is my dream catcher, droplets of my desires, wishes, prayers, my hopes glistening overhead.

Into which reality will you invest your essence? She asks.

Destruction, fury, begrudging, vengefulness? Or renewal, abundance, love, hope?

Closing my eyes, I can feel the soft pink sweater of my childhood, the comfort of a bonnet string tied snugly under my chin. Most of all, I feel purity of knowing. The child’s wisdom that all is well. I can feel the pain of this loss, but it need not turn to suffering under the weight of my ruminating thoughts.

 

You are a holder of hope, she says. Do not let your adult eyes betray what you know to be true. All the trees of your life are not gone. Their roots, in their time of rot, nurture the soil. Their flesh is offered as nurse logs, havens for seedlings to flourish. Their branches twine through your memories, their trunks still hold your spine, their fruits still nourish your creative soul. We are energy in your veins.

 

And so I wept today.

(song lyrics belong to Trevor Hall)