Learning how to age with trees

Somewhere around the age of 27 my parents got old.  I’m not quite sure exactly how and when it happened. I was visiting home for the Thanksgiving holiday when I noticed the gray in my dad’s beard.  As if over night, the gray had spread to every hair on his chin and head.  Of course, the graying process had been going on for some time, but it was that Thanksgiving I noticed it.  A great sadness came over me, and an anxiety set in that has since never left. 

If we are lucky, we live blissfully unaware of the devastation that time can wreck on our heart and souls for many years.  With the exception of our pets, who share a seventh or eighth of our life, many of the humans in our lives stay with us for a considerable amount of our time on this earth. And we hope those humans closest to us will share all of our time on this earth.  But time can be cruel.  It both giveth and taketh away. 

We cope with the aging process in different ways.  Some of us look to the timelessness of human-contrived things, like music or art.  While others look to the natural world.  We grasp on to starry night skies, oceans, or mountains, anything that will anchor us in this time and place and keep us from uncontrollably flying off into the dark abyss of the time-space continuum.

My anchor has always been trees.

Since a little girl I have regarded trees as magical beasts.  Many of them outlive us, and they gracefully observe the passage of our existence.  My childhood home was surrounded by old red oaks.  I grew up under those red oaks.  I played “catch the leaf” under them in the autumn.  I cried under them, I played under them, I lived under them.  They were as constant as the load-bearing walls in our home, holding up the forest and sky.  They were the stage of my being for many years.  During the early years we would have strangers knock on our door to share stories about the largest of the red oaks in the back.  One older woman reminisced with my dad about family reunions under that tree.  It was a treasure, a constant.  Of course trees do not live forever, and a few times we had trees struck by lightning.  We lived on one of the tallest hills south of Atlanta, and the lightning could not resist our closeness to its resident clouds.  We lost three beautiful red oaks in my childhood, and each one was a true loss.  Their removals made us feel naked, as if a piece of our home had been taken away by God himself. 

However, the majority of those red oaks, water oaks, and Pecan trees too stood the test of time, at least in my 30 years of living on North Davis Drive.  They were there when I discovered my passion for nature, when I prevailed through the awkward years of puberty, when I went off to college, when I came home from college (unemployed), and when I got married.  Those dear trees never left me.  They were there through the biggest of life changes.  They have anchored me at my most vulnerable. 

I could make this essay about how noble a creature I consider the tree.  I could tell you that they are selfless and giving.  I could tell you that one mature tree provides enough oxygen on which two humans can subsist for a year.  I could tell you that I often do not think we as humans deserve trees.  But this essay is not about what trees can do for us and how we should feel little in their presence.  Rather this is an essay about how trees and nature can be celebrated for the life and sanity they provide us in our most vulnerable of times – how trees have, at the very least, been my sanity through watching my parents age and a changing world.

I am preparing for my next visit to see my folks.  I have Christmas presents wrapped and cookies baked.  I am thrilled to see their faces when we walk into their home, exhausted and irritable from the trip down I-40 in holiday traffic.  They will welcome us with open arms into their new home in the North Carolina mountains.  It will be the first Christmas celebrated in their new house, and I will not have my familiar trees to keep me company.  However, I plan to make friends with the new trees in their backyard.  Their presence will be a reminder of nature’s protracted time and in that reality I will find comfort.  I will see the white of my dad’s beard and the unsteadiness of his gate, and I will feel comfort.  For his aging is not too unlike a tree’s.  He is embarking on “mature tree” status when it gets harder to recover from wounds and the common flu.  It will be more difficult for him to bounce back from life’s trials.  But his roots are strong and they have a lasting stronghold on my heart.  He may be unsteady in the wind, but I will be here to be his crutch.  And when it is all too much, when the tree analogies only make the hurt of aging loved ones harsher, then I will simply take a walk in the woods.  For it is there I will find the peace of nature and her constant.  It is there I will be anchored on this earth and comforted in the pain and fear that time can so harshly give.  In time’s taking, my walk among the trees will be my giving.  And together somehow we will be made stronger in the aging. 

To my trees that always give, I love you.  And to time, who can threaten to take so much away, I honor you and will grace your presence with sturdy heart.  May my roots be the witness of my loving and my enduring.

Fall Wind

The tumultuous Fall Wind
Makes chaos
Of the once living
A beautiful mess of color

The wind turns
On the hind haunches
Of His Majesty
"Change"

And we are left motionless
In His wake
Pained with the cuts of unknowing

Motionless, speechless
We stand
As the leaves of chaos and color
Envelop us

We feel fear and guilt
Sadness and despair

Yet we also feel
A measured anger
And a bruised sense of righteousness

And in this we find light
For these
Are the motivators
Of our human souls

These are the pieces of our spirits
That enable us
To walk proudly
Into the fog of unknowing

As the leaves settle around us
We stand tall against the wind
For we are stronger
Than these tears may suggest

These tears are
The witnesses of our power
The testament of our faith

Fall Wind
Yes, dry these tears today
But Majesty be damned
You see them tomorrow

For in the morning
We march forward
Faces accentuated
By dried riverbeds
And emboldened souls

We are a powerful
And a stubborn people

Our resistance
Is defined by the autumn colors
You strive to confuse
With your entropy

Our souls are now calmed
Our hearts filled
And our marching feet
Oriented by your gravity

Look to your horizon
There you will see us standing
In the dawn

Witness our sunrise
And beware of its Beauty

The easy life of your past
Will be gone
For we come to rob your ease
And the costly complacency
You once knew

Majesty
Until dawn
When we see you again.

Butterfly Shadows

Fleeting a shadow
Brushes my face
Its coolness slight
Its maker unknown

Looking up
She is there
Butterfly glamour
In setting sun light

Fleeting as she came
Into the shadows
Of Night

In this Dusk
The approaching night
Worries my soul

It brings hate
And fear
Canyons of shadows
Dividing our global bodies

In this Night
The shadows of our souls
Fight a war
Against our existence

In this Night
Shadows are all we see
Butterly shadows
Forever haunting
Our waking
Forever robbing
Our dreaming

Yet... Luckily..
It is Dusk
The time of
Crepuscular hopes
And colorful dreams

In this Dusk
Memories and dreams
Color minds and souls
And bring peace
In the tide of shadows

This Night
Will not define
The beings we are

It will not
Make us prisoners
Of the dark

We will not
Be shadows of ourselves
We will not be
Condemned to the shadows
Of our joy

No.  This Dusk
Is a gift
That will be here
Tomorrow and the next

This Dusk
Welcomes the inside
Of love and joy
This Dusk
Is Us.

And so the keepers
Of butterfly shadows
Fly bravely
Into a night
Of our making
Bearing the hopes
Of our being

A colorful jubilee
Fracturing the dark.

Alligator Woman

Womanhood.  No one warns you of its surprises, its hardships, its nuisances.  No one tells you that there will be bad days, days where you feel the urge to sing James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World” loudly… and spitefully.  No one prepares you for that day in the workplace when you are made to feel smaller.  Similarly, no one prepares you for the good days, the days you celebrate being a woman.  The days in the office, where people want to listen to you and gain insight from you perspective.  The days you love wearing that hot red dress.  All of us as women benefit from knowing other women and men in our life, who help us grow and help us find strength in the very gifts that make us who we are.  I have grown with the help of many wonderful women in my life.  I have women, who have helped me develop my adventurous self -- with whom I have chased windmills in the Spanish countryside and with whom I have climbed canyons.  I have women, who have helped heal my broken heart – who have held me when the tears of heartbreak have made waterfalls of my face.  I have women, who have helped me find a truer version of myself, who have helped me find God in a desert and truth in philosophical conversations on a Georgia back porch.  I have women, who have helped me realize strength I never knew I had, women, who have loved me through my failures and have helped me love myself a little more.  To all the women in my life, who have helped me more graciously embrace womanhood.  Thank you.  You are my rocks, my sunshine, and my strength.  I love you.

Although I have “binders of women” in my life, and although I could write an entire book about stories with all of them… I write this essay about one woman in my past.  Ultimately, however, I hope that this essay serves as a tribute to all the lovely women, who have helped me along my path.

I met the Alligator Woman at a research station in South Georgia, where I worked as a summer research assistant.  The research station was set far back in the woods, situated on a longleaf pine preserve. The longleaf pine forests, which once covered the expanse of the Southeast U.S., are now relegated to small preserves and state parks, and this special research station in South Georgia is one of its most magnificent strongholds - longleaf pine stands for miles, broken up only by the occasional wetland or the Flint River to its East.  The nearest town with a grocery store was Colquitt 20 miles away. And the nearest coffee shop was in Albany was 40 miles away.  This place was the essence of “country” living and your best chance at entertainment was making friends with the people in your closest proximity.  Luckily, the research station was also hub of graduate students and scientists, ready-made friends within close reach.  I was assigned to live in a house with the Alligator Woman and, let’s call her, the Fox Woman.  The Armadillo Man and the Coyote Man lived next door.  We had frequent visits that summer from the Rattlesnake Woman and the Frog Woman.  I lived in a house of many lovely badass women, and I felt like the luckiest girl alive.  

My main duty that summer was to help maintain some plots on site at the research station that were planted in longleaf pine forest flora.  However, I also floated around to other labs helping with tasks where needed.  I did field work with the wetland lab, the wildlife biology lab, as well as the herpetology lab.  Everyday was an adventure, and I was thrilled to be working with so many brilliant minds.  I went out armadillo tracking at night, helped set alligator traps, was an observer of a rattlesnake tracker implant surgery, and waded through wetlands collecting microbial data.

Of all my many adventures, however, there was one I will remember most.  It involved a canoe ride down the Flint River with the Alligator Woman.

The trip was part research, part relaxation.  We needed to check a few alligator traps, but it was also a beautiful Saturday for a leisurely canoe ride.  At the time I had not yet helped the Alligator Woman with her research in the field.  So I was mildly alarmed when we approached one of her traps on the river.  The trap included a large mass of hanging raw meat dangling just feet from the shore’s surface.  I felt a strange mix of emotions.  For when we rounded the bend and neared the meat trap, it seemed as though the very meat itself was afire with butterflies.  A mass of swallowtail butterflies had almost entirely covered the meat and the ground beneath it.  Later I discovered such a phenomenon was not abnormal.  Often insects, including Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), will gather around carrion, as well as mud puddles and other areas, that are nutrient rich with sodium and amino acids.  Butterflies, in particular, can use these supplemental nutrients for sustenance and reproduction.  How amazing I thought, as I stared at the large mass of rotting carrion with a thousand wings, how something that otherwise would evoke a sense of fear and dread can also somehow be beautiful.  This lesson of nature’s double-faced reality was one of many I would learn from the Alligator Woman that summer.  Not many weeks after the canoe ride I was out checking traps with the Alligator Woman when we came upon a surprise.  Off in the distance we spotted a rather large alligator, possibly the “Mother of all Alligators” known at the research station.  This was the legend, the 10-ft alligator that lurked in the shadows of your worst nightmares.  I watched as the Alligator Woman observed wistfully through her binoculars.  Later she told me a story about a recent day she had in the field.  She was in a wetland alone setting a trap, and although she never sighted the alligator, she was fairly confident one of the larger alligators was in the wetland with her… watching.  I cringed and made some kind of corny joke that masked my nervousness.  She quickly turned to me with a look of seriousness on her face.  For the Alligator Woman being in the presence of these creatures conjured emotions that bordered the line of fear and awe, death and life.  For the Alligator Woman these moments were possibly spiritual, a rare chance to be one with nature.  I never made a corny joke on the matter ever again.

After checking traps on the river that day, we commenced our leisurely canoe ride down the Flint River.  The sun was warm, the breeze just right, and the water our open road.  Our small cooler held a few PBR’s, some orange cream soda, and a couple of sandwiches, the appropriate fuel for a day canoe ride.  Nothing spectacular happened that day.  No 10-ft alligators surfaced, no surprises welcomed us from the river.  Even the fish were lazy.  I suppose the thing that made that canoe ride so special was learning about womanhood from the perspective of a woman, who I greatly admired – a woman who embodied all that had ever been badass and cool.  The Alligator Woman told me tales of her adventures, her love stories, her triumphs and failures.  She told me about what it was to be a woman and a scientist.  She explained to me that there were many paths to womanhood, and I could choose whichever path I wanted.  She also told me that I could take pride in being a woman.  I had nothing for which to be ashamed.  For much of my life I secretly envied men.  At 19, it seemed men had more leisure to focus on their careers and do great things.  I also envied men, because they were not burdened by pesky lady hormones that played tricks on their emotions.  However, the Alligator Woman told me there was wisdom to be learned from my emotions, strength to be gained from my experiences, and hope to be gathered from my dreams.  Being a life-full woman was not for the weak hearted.  After the canoe ride that day womanhood became something to be both feared and revered.  Somehow in that moment, all the Alligator Woman’s talk about being in a wetland alone with a 10ft alligator made sense.  I was both utterly petrified and thrilled about the path of womanhood ahead of me. 

I often go back to that day on the Flint River in my mind when I feel weak and tired.  On days when I feel like the woman victim, or on days I feel as if the plight of lady emotions is just too much to bare, I remember the Alligator Woman.  I remember that the road to womanhood is long but it can be an adventure.  I remember that this path is not easy, but I am strong.  Years later another woman mentor told me that I should always go into interviews and presentations with “boobs out.”  Okay, not literally boobs out.  She meant that I should stand tall and embrace my womanhood despite both the earth’s gravity and my own self-doubt.  And so as I write these last lines, on one of those weak and tired days, I tell myself:

“Boobs out, Sarah.  That’s what the Alligator Woman would do.” 

The Old Brown Couch

I have fought nobly against the passage of time for much of my life.  I suppose some people may call this a resistance to change.

When I was five, life was good.  It was predictable and consistent.  I would wake up every morning to the same cartoons.  Dad would make me the same kinds of Toaster Strudels, and I would go to the baby sitter’s house via the same route.  For five blissful years it seemed my life was perfect, and I would be a kid forever.  And then one day, it happened.  Change.  My first realization that time is long and the lives of others are no measure against its vastness.  I wish I could say that this life lesson was first learned via my relationship with another sentient being.  However, I am sad to say that no.  Alas, I learned this lesson via my relationship with an old brown couch.  Yes.  It was time.  My parents were sick of that old brown couch that sat happily and tired in our living room.  It reeked of ancient dust and old farts.  It had been well lived on.  But it was surely time for it to go.  Go where?  Of course, at the time I did not know.  Maybe to the farm, where I had heard all old lives go.  Or maybe, as I learned later, the place where all old furniture goes.  To some lucky bachelor’s apartment, who would be thrilled for the $5 dollar deal at the local GoodWill.  Wherever that brown couch was to go, I was not happy about it.  I will not forget that Saturday morning, possibly for as long as I will live.   Mom and Dad dusted and wiped down the couch an opened up the front door to carry it out.  I insisted on saying my goodbyes, and I wept like a champ.  “Change is terrible!” I thought to myself.  Mom and Dad pursued to escort the old brown couch out of the living room, and I had what I can today recollect as my first true breakdown.  I spiraled willfully out of control.  “I never want to grow up!” I exclaimed.  I cried and cried and cried.  I was inconsolable and my parents were completely at a loss.  Oh no, they must of thought, how is she going to react when we have to get rid of the dryer?  That old recliner has to go too.  How is she going to react to that?  I think at that moment I may have encouraged a mild pack rat habit in both of my parents.  For example that old recliner…. It didn’t go until high school.  Sorry mom and dad.

After the brown couch incident, I got a little better with change – but only slightly.  I fought change as best as I could, but to no avail.  Life carried on, as did time.  Big life changes did not become any easier because I was convinced I wanted to be a kid, and a young person forever.  Who doesn’t?  I suppose you can say I was not in a hurry to grow up.  Later in life this manifested into me not being in a hurry to get married, buy a house, be done with school (Side note: I’m still not done with school). 

However, then I turned 30, and my thoughts about time and its passage quickly evolved.  See somewhere in your young adulthood you notice that your parents start to grow older.  You notice that your friends move away and start new lives of their own.  You have to say goodbye to lots of people, and the gravity of the goodbyes weighs you down.  You begin to convince yourself you are saying more goodbyes than helloes.  It is in these moments that I find great sadness.  It is in these moments I seek solace, and I yearn for a peace that lifts the weight on my heart.  And as with all times in my life when I search for these things… I look to nature for her guidance, as some people look to God.  I suppose I consider the two synonymous.

In this year of 30, I have been letting nature teach me more about time.  I have succumbed to the reality that I can no longer fight time, its power, or its omnipresence.  In this year, I have taken more note of Nature’s rhythms and her tides.  I suppose this is also aided by my PhD research.  I spend long hours out among the trees, catching bugs, and trying to better understand their place in a world that we have greatly altered.  I have to think of all the variables that may affect the growth, survival, and behavior of my one small beast of interest.  And in doing this thought experiment, I have learned a great deal about Nature’s elegant handling of time.  Trees, for example, the very trees I have known all my life, are most predictable.  They flower in the early spring and fruit in late summer and fall.  Very few trees in the Southeast Piedmont I have discovered flower during the summer.  “But why?” I recently asked.  I would like to think that trees follow this cadence because they have evolved to share time with their short-lived plant brethren, the forbs and grasses.  Summer is the season for asters, roses, and grasses.  Trees flower and carry out reproduction before some of the first wildflowers even break the surface of the soil.  Many trees rely on the same pollinators for reproduction that forbs do.  And thus it may seem that Nature and her plants have created a timeline that optimizes the use of one of her greatest resources for reproduction, the bees and the small flying things.  Over millennia, plants and insects have together established a rhythm that is most elegant and refined and I am entirely in awe.  

However, what I have also discovered in this year of 30 is that Nature does not resist change.  Although she has established a beautiful rhythm, her rhythm constantly changes with every season and day.  Nature is change.  And I have learned that when I feel most feverish and foolish in the face of change, I can look to Nature to learn how better to handle it with grace, wisdom, and patience.  There is a rhythm in my life too.  Accepting change and time’s prowess will help me discover the melody that governs both my life and the lives of others.

I suppose in this year of 30, my brown couch syndrome is not entirely cured.  I am human after all.  I am a work in progress, as all humans are.  We are a chaotic, rather insecure bunch.  However, I have hope that I have turned a corner.  Maybe this means I will welcome a new life chapter with more grace, or maybe this means I will let go of the past more tenderly, like autumn leaves in the slightest breeze.  I hope, at the very least, it means I will let go of old broken furniture more readily.  Could I call this year my pack-rat cure?  My husband would be thrilled. 

And so brown couch I say adieu.  May you be refurnished in a broke bachelor’s home and bring joy in your new life.  I must move on.  The time for welcoming a new living room set is long overdue.  Adieu.