Rooted, like trees
THE NATURE OF US
The first poem I remember hearing was in fifth grade. I have never forgotten the opening lines: I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree. These lines, from the poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer, influenced the way I looked at trees, and were my first reflection on the power of nature.
In these difficult times, the deep solace nature provides is a necessary medicine. Taking some time to be alone barefoot, sitting, or lying on the earth, perhaps under a favorite tree, restores and regenerates us. We need to ground the spiritual, emotional, and mental aspects of ourselves into the heart of matter, into our bodies and the earth. If I stay with the felt sense of reaching deep into the earth, as a tree does, my mind begins to empty and I feel more clarity.
I have loved many trees. I hope you have as well. To me they feel wise and deeply protective, standing in one place for years, loving and watching over us.
My childhood corner bedroom, up on the third floor, was surrounded by pine trees. The windows looked down on the tail end of a small lake. I was thrilled being high up with a birds-eye view in the treetops. I still find myself attracted to houses reaching into the trees, watching the birds come and go, and my sense of safety deep in the privacy of the trees.
I remember being entranced by the magic of the snow falling at night, snowflakes silently floating down, captured in the spotlights aimed at the lake. In the daytime, I would scour the unpaved streets of our little community, finding neighborhood trees to climb, attempting to go higher and higher. Sometimes, I would follow paths deep into the pines surrounding us at the end of the street, loving to roam through the silent forests.
I still walk through woods looking for trees with branches easy to hang from and climb. One day a few years ago, I re-lived a bit of the feeling of being up in a tree. A very unusual tree made it possible:
Walking through the wetlands on a windy day, I encountered a tree growing horizontally towards a nearby stream. While the trunk stretched out sideways, many of its branches grew vertically. I was easily able to reach my hands up to grab the vertical limbs, climbing onto the trunk where my feet found a safe foothold. Amazingly, I was up in a tree yet very comfortable and relaxed, my body able to stretch out and feel at home.
I felt into my connection to the tree through my arms and legs, sensing how the branches were being moved by the strong wind. As I became increasingly receptive to the energy of wind moving branches, my arms began to translate this feeling to my entire body. In let go, yet held to the tree by hands and feet, my body was danced by the wind, as the swaying branches conveyed their own experience through my hands to my body. It was as if a partner was leading me, moving my body to the rhythm of the ever changing improvisational wind.
I was both wild free child and strong sensual woman, fully interconnected with the earth and sky though wind and tree. I remembered the joy of being a child scrambling up trees, and thought of how rarely climbing a tree, with their daunting verticality, seemed possible nowadays. What a joy to find a horizontal tree!
My mind also flashed on the joy of dancing with a skilled partner, being guided yet improvising. Implausibly, in this moment, here I was, transported in joy in an impromptu dance with a very gentle tree. Swirling, swaying, wildly alive, lost and graced in the interplay of wind/tree/human embodiment.
I had entered another world, a world of feeling rather than thinking. So streams the fullness into you when things and thoughts cannot contain it, says Rilke in Book Of Hours II,10. Riding on an ocean of waves, floating, supported in a womb of love, lost in the dance with a tree, I touch this deeper world and feel alive. Thinking is not completely absent at these times. It comes when necessary.
The secret to being a tree, my felt sense of a tree: strong core reaching deep into the earth extending into the sky, and a porous web of leaves able to let life - sun, wind, rain - pour through. Trees are our teachers. They model being connected to earth and sky, and shelter and protect from winds and rain. Interconnection with protective boundaries.
There is a wonderful bottlebrush tree outside my living room right now. She provides ongoing sustenance for the neighborhood. Her red blossoms lure the hummingbirds and small birds. The bees and butterflies flock to her blooms as well. I have seen foxes, raccoons, and weasels climb her trunk and branches, nestling inside her boughs. I can see her clearly though my large windows, and she reminds me of giving and receiving, the bounty of natural abundance.
There are trees from my past I will never forget. I usually have a favorite one or two of these mysterious friends wherever I live. Once an oak draped across the upper deck of my house, her branches presiding over the deck. I had saved it from being cut, when workers had wanted to trim this branch back from the deck. My landlady even reported the oak was doing much better since I had lived there. One evening I was feeling very sad, crying and depressed, when I heard strange sounds outside on my deck. The tree was hurling its acorns onto the deck, interrupting my misery. It worked - I began to feel her caring for me, letting me know she was there. The oak and I had formed a bond of affection and caring. We were kin.
In addition to comfort and presence, trees model the power of gravity. By surrendering to gravity – to the earth’s intelligence – trees are nourished from their roots. We can draw sustenance from being connected to the earth’s grid, and allow energy to rise through us. Especially standing on the earth barefoot, we are strengthened and supported.
How surely gravity’s law,
Strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world
Each thing --
each stone, blossom, child –
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted,
like trees.
Rilke, p.116 The Book of Hours
I love the part about being held in place as trees are. The more deeply we feel into the earth, the more secure we feel. Many of us have been uprooted from our original lands, and grounding and feeling the earth are even more difficult.
*******
I have wondered how I learned to love nature. Perhaps the poem Trees in fifth grade helped. Nature wasn’t really talked about when I grew up. My parents loved the water - lakes and oceans, it was a love modeled rather than spoken directly. We lived in an old suburb that was still surrounded by nature, with lakes carved out of cranberry bogs. We were allowed to run wild to explore - as long as we were home for dinner.
I remember in my twenties reading about the Findhorn gardens and thinking, someday in my future I want to connect to the plants and trees more deeply. In my early thirties, the first time I lived in Boulder, I began to chafe at the neighbor’s outdoor lighting shining into my back yard at night. I dreamed about living in a house on a cliff near water. A few years later I moved to California. There I lived in an artist-built glorified tree house, high on a Fairfax ridge for thirteen years, with a climb of 130 stairs, so drafty it was like living outside. I was surrounded by trees up there, and it was reminiscent of growing up in the pine trees of South Jersey. A blessed immersion in nature, at first daunting, as it would rock like a ship on the high seas during a storm due to its unusual telephone pole frame.
I learned to be much closer to nature in those years, and to feel deep gratitude for the earth. From that time on, when I was looking for my next place, I would ask the earth to place me where I would feel her the most. Slowly, surely, and mysteriously, I have felt the earth continue to pull me closer over the years.
As Rilke says above:
How surely gravity’s law,
Strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world
My hope is that you find a tree nearby, or a favorite spot in nature - and that it pulls you toward the heart of the world.
Thank you for joining me here today!
Sabrina Page, MA in Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness I work with individuals and groups, with a focus on somatic inquiry and embodiment, to support you in living life fully, freely, and fluidly, intertwined with nature. As well, I have studied movement, dance and astrology with some of the leading individuals in their fields. My private sessions are offered on zoom, phone, or in person in Bolinas, Ca.
More information is available on my website, sabrinapage.com
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