Druidic Childhood Leanings
There was a field with a lake in it next to my house when I was growing up, and there were woods that ran along one edge of it--and my backyard ran up against the field. This memory is from before I knew any of the names of the trees or the grasses or the flowers. But this was the first land that I loved.
Though I knew no names of any tree, I knew the black walnut tree in my backyard. He was (and is) a king; I still remember that three. All the pine trees died, but the black walnut stayed.
Trees have a network of fungi that connect their roots. It’s like a tree internet. When one tree dies, the other trees know of the death by its silence. This leads me to wonder: do trees die of loneliness?
I say this because this would mean that pine trees are inherently social creatures, and the black walnut stood alone in a circle of grass. Aloof. I tried talking to him, but I could never make my voice creak quite like branches rubbing together in the wind.
The land has changed yet more since I lived there. But the trees were some of my first teachers. They taught me that God is in everything. They taught me about steadfastness. The death of the woods adjoining the field (for a rather ugly house in my opinion) taught me what it feels like to lose land with which you have relationship, where your stories have unfolded.
The trees were my first teachers against capitalism.
I can measure the milestones of my childhood against which trees that I loved were cut down. Call me a crusty environmentalist, a sentimental hippie, a fundamentalist Pagan, or a Lorax wannabe, but I cherish the trees. They have taught me to be an adult that remembers the land wherever she is, who forges new relationships with every footstep on this Earth
