About Collaborating with Trees

for poetics and healing

I've always held a fascination with trees. Each tree can be a protector as well as you. Someone hidden can also remain hidden by merely stepping around the trunk.

It's now obvious to me why I chose a tree to write about when I first started journaling based on the advice of a professor at a local university. To become a better writer, he advised me to keep a journal and carry a thesaurus.

I rarely had time to write or even “make myself study” because of untreated depression, little support, and continuing full-time work at McDonald's (my first day working there was three days after I had turned sixteen).

Still, I would walk out to the park across the street, sit on a rocking bench, and under the parklight write to the tree.

I remember writing about the tree being a survivor like me, lonely and alone. However, I didn't know at that time that trees were part of an interconnected network of food and communication. The mycorrhizal fungi also aid in their lives. I couldn't see the underground network of friends waiting for me to meet them, to form some kind of reciprocal community.

My time at Naropa University in 2023 affirmed my love for trees as CA Conrad instructed us to take our rose quartz crystals to communicate with each tree. Each tree did give me a different kind of poem. The oldest sycamore on the grounds even refused to talk to me!

Circling trees has become part of my practice. I'm looking forward to starting again this year as I've been away from it. Circling trees can even boost your memory.

I realize the occultist connections with trees are part of my inner landscape.

I know many people did not care for the film The Fountain, but it's a movie both Jericho and I agreed upon when choosing transformative films for our co-taught course last fall. In the film, a specific tree provides a focal point in storytelling as it is has properties for extending life. Yes, there are many problematic things about the film when it comes to colonization. However, the way Arnofsky uses symbols and imagery is so well done! It is like a religious experience.

Even with a religious upbringing where I was told that a tree can be forbidden and sinful, it's hard for me to justify that metaphor in any way. The tree of knowledge is the tree of the unknown. I love embracing each mystery to see what I next have to learn.