Number 57

 

I've been reading some Emerson and Thoreau lately, specifically Thoreau's essay, "Walking" and Emerson's famous "Nature," both bound together in a handsome paperback edition (Beacon Press, 1991) with charming wood engravings by  Thomas W. Nason.

In "Nature," Emerson writes "The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.  I am not alone and unacknowledged.  They nod to me, and I to them.  The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old.  It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown.  Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking  justly or doing right."

Number 56

 

Detail from a 2015 water colour by Malgorzata Wolak Dault

A Tree

A tree is a ladder

A tree is a comb

A leafy balloon

Or a parasol

A tree is many

A tree is one

A key to a door

Under the stars

(M.W.D., Sunday January 10, 2021)

Number 55

 

In his Specimen Days (1882), poet Walt Whitman announces, in "The Lesson of a Tree," that he is about to talk about "his favourite poplar."  What he proceeds to say could apply, however, to any tree anywhere:

"How strong, vital, enduring! how doubly eloquent!  What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming.  Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage.  It is, yet says nothing.”

Number 54

 

A few days ago, two friends of ours--John Kuti and Lynn A'Court-- sent us a link (see below) that transported us to the peace of the world's forests--a handsome gift!

By going to tree.fm ("Tune into forests from around the world"), you can visit (and listen to) places you're unlikely to get to anytime soon: forests in Estonia, Norway, China, Spain, Russia, Portugal, Romania and many more.

The visual lushness available on Tree.fm reminded me of the Polish forests I used to love walking in with my family.  The photograph posted here is of the  woods near the village of Raszowka, where my mother lives.

> https://www.tree.fm/forest/27

Number 53

 

Unlike the young tree, which longs to grow beyond

itself, an old tree resigns itself to being what it now is.

Number 52

 

"All trees in the world are journeying somewhere.

Perpetual pilgrimage."

                                     ----Vladimir Nabokov, "Gods" in The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 45

Number 51

 

I was just beginning to think about a weekly tree, when Gary drew my attention to a book he loves and was now reading for the second time--Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Flight To Arras from 1942.  

He reminded me that while Saint-Ex (as Gary refers to him affectionately) is best known as the author-illustrator of The Little Prince, his far greater achievement lies in his brilliant novels about his life as a pilot--especially as a fighter pilot in his Flight To Arras, a book my husband has always regarded as both the greatest anti-war novel and the greatest anti-bureaucratic novel ever written. 

"Listen," he said this morning, "this is the kind of thing Saint-Ex thinks while flying at 30,000 feet over enemy territory," and he read me following:

"There is a serenity that is higher than the pronouncements of the intelligence.  There is a thing which pierces and governs us and which cannot be grasped by the intelligence. 

A tree has no language.  We are a tree.  There are truths which are evident, though not put into words...."