And some more tree-wisdom...

You may recall a recent Tree post about my special friend who decided to ‘communicate’ with me via a daily trickle of water - not sap - at the strategic spot where my habit is to sniff the oh so elusive, often beyond subtle, aroma of her bark.

This daily message of hers became very scarce, for drought is upon us, and I have urged her not to deprive herself of what she needs. But she still squeezed out a few drops…, one drop… every day, until she couldn’t. This was just a few days ago.

The violent heat and broiling wind blowing hot dust all over everything have come on early this year. I admire the tree’s determination to give me her caring attention for so long, and her persistent holding on to foliage (which she would normally shed) to keep ‘her’ pond cool and alive.

I thought there would be no more ‘messages’, watery or otherwise, from the great being, until the monsoon. But no. She had another, possibly bigger, surprise in store for me.

Returning home after a few days chasing administrative tedium, I gratefully walked over to celebrate a new reunion with my precious tree friend - always a heart-squeezing moment. Coming close to the trunk I noticed a heady fragrance that was never there before. Where was it coming from?

With my nose now right on the trunk at the familiar ‘sniffing’ spot, I received a strong burst of a highly charged exotic smell, something belonging to the family of ‘sacred fragrance’. What was it? Not sandalwood, which has lighter notes. Palosanto (aka ‘holy wood’) perhaps, with its heavier ones? Jatamansi? Whatever it was, my head was spinning and my heart beating fast - because of the aroma itself but also because this aroma did not belong to this species.

This is a rain-tree, a species known to give off fragrance only from its seasonal flowers (but I have never noticed this in the case of this particular tree). Its bark or wood is not harvested for fragrance, unlike sandalwood, nor is its wood inoculated with some specific fungus to develop a fragrant exsudate (palosanto has to lie dead, and to begin rotting for this to happen).

What could this familiar fragrance possibly be? I checked against essential oils in my possession. Definitely not sandal, nor palosanto, nor anything else. Just to be sure, I decided to check the most improbable of oils for comparison - a tiny-tiny vial of agarwood (known as oud in Arabic-speaking countries). I say improbable because agarwood is the most expensive, most prized of all ‘sacred’ fragrances, favored by major Shinto shrines and uber-wealthy Arab sheikhs. Surely my rain-tree could not be producing the aroma of agarwood!

Well, it turns out that the non-fragrant trunk of my rain-tree gives off a fragrance very similar to that of agarwood! Just a little more raw… How could this be possible?

In addition, it gives the fragrance only at ‘my’ special sniffing spot. So I am not dealing with a whole-tree phenomenon that could be ‘just natural’, but with some sort of ‘message’. A message of love from my tree to me, for sure - but why convey it in such extraordinary fashion by the most exceptional of fragrances?

I let the fragrance in, being breathed by it - feeling overwhelmed, confused, grateful, humbled, elated…

In this state I began ‘receiving’ something else from the tree, which, along with the intense fragrance, shook me to my core. I repeated it back to her to make sure I was not being delusional. Every time it floats back into my consciousness it activates my familiar ideomotor signal and brings forth a few tears of un-named emotion.

Here it is.

A very, very long time ago, all trees constantly released from within themselves all manner of wonderful fragrances - not only from their temporary blossoms. You would just walk among the trees and the aromas were right there, freely wafting on the breeze or dropping down slowly in the stillness of the air. The trees rejoiced in the love that humans gave them.

At some point, some humans began to live in cities. They wanted to have those fragrances in their homes and temples. They were the civilized ones - from civis meaning city - who had left behind what they deemed to be the backwardness of the country folk. In the cities, people were too busy to really love the trees. In the cities, tree density could never emulate that of trees populating the spaces between villages. In the cities, the trees gave no freely wafting fragrances from within themselves.

So city people decided to cut down fragrant trees from the countryside and to bring pieces of their wood into their homes.

The trees in the countryside reacted, by locking inside themselves their precious fragrances that carried the love-meanings of tree-souls. The village people no longer received these treasures freely, but they continued to love their great friends.

But the city people would not respect the will of the trees. They discovered ways to extract from cut trees the fragrances as oils. They developed different techniques. Those oils became highly prized around the world, especially for religious rituals and the palaces of kings. Oil extraction was expensive and labor-intensive. The oils, in high demand, fetched high prices. Those who labored to extract the oils were paid a pittance. And the cities became stinky with overpopulation as the poor flocked to them to earn a pittance, hence the fragrant oils were in ever-growing demand for the sensitive noses of the wealthy.

(Certain species in sparsely populated hot countries found a compromise - their fragrance was locked in their resin that they would let out as tears, for instance the compassionate olibanum or frankincense).

Over time, most of the naturally growing ‘sacred’ fragrance trees were gone. By the end of the twentieth century, all the old sandalwood trees of Mysore were gone.

My tree fell silent. She and I stayed suspended in sadness for a while. But I was jolted out of it by the real fragrance that was right there, and was the real conclusion of the story - the conclusion that my tree had provided before conveying the story. She had already given me the actual olfactory demonstration of an ancient fragrance released freely from within her, not locked inside her wood.

I hardly dared to wonder - as we are on the threshold of a new age, might this behavior possibly be remembered by other trees… by all trees… and she caught my question before I could articulate it to myself. ‘Yes’, came the answer, very softly, ‘provided humans really love us as they used to, a long, very long time ago.’

As the tree gives her ‘agarwood’ fragrance rather privately to me, I asked whether this story from a long, long time ago was also only for me. The answer was a very emphatic ‘no’.

She said - ‘at this point in time, this kind of story must be shared’.

Perhaps you will find it crazy. My rational mind is getting used to it. To the natural mystic, the sensation of walking among trees freely giving off beyond-ordinary fragrances is a strangely familiar one.