Some time ago I announced a tree story at the end a video. Said video is not available, but the tree story is very much alive for me to share here.
Certain trees, notably in the tropics, are great big beings that also grow pretty fast. One such tree that I had planted by a pond refused to follow the standard, and remained a miniature great tree for years, indifferent to my ministrations and fertilizations.
Until one day I finally felt it call out for a different kind of attention, which in retrospect I translate from tree-talk into human language as ‘Could you please see me instead of just seeing me?’ Although at that time I didn’t have this ‘translation’, my perception did change - instead of observing a struggling tree I now saw the juvenile elegance of its overall bearing and silhouette. Now instead of my worried compassion, the tree was getting admiration and curiosity.
I began to visit this tree every day, and to sit on the ground next to it, trying to listen as a tree would to the world around her (this is a lady in terms of tree personality). Some months later, she showed signs of eagerly fast growth, and began to spread her canopy wide. So… the earlier slow progress couldn’t be blamed solely on poor soil. Or was it just coincidence, that I happened to perceive the tree differently just as the taproot had reached deep enough? Or in reverse, was it no coincidence, if a human’s non-utilitarian attention had provided the subtle ‘food’ for this taproot to get activated?
Be that as it may, within a couple of years the miniature one became the great mother-tree shading and protecting the pond. She was the first being of nature to which I whispered subtly ‘breathe me’. We have been ‘breathing each other’ daily ever since.
It is with her that I ‘learnt’ the delicate non-doing activity of ‘translation’ from human language to non-verbal, and vice-versa. Practice would often revolve around a specific topic of interest to both of us - rain, particularly in the stifling hot season before the monsoon.
If the heat delayed the growth of new leaves (which would worry me since years of drought out here have caused many a young tree to die), I would enquire whether the lady-tree was alright. Inevitably I would also ask whether rain was on its way. Sometimes I would get a clear ‘no’. If I received a clear ‘yes’, I’d ask ‘rain… tomorrow?’ If the answer was ‘yes’, I would be rather disappointed when ‘tomorrow’ yielded no rain. Was I asking incorrect questions? Was the tree giving me a compassionate white lie?
No. It was a matter of correct ‘translation’. Over the days, it became ‘empirico-statistically’ clear that the tree did not lie but had its nuances in ‘vocabulary’. My ‘tomorrow’ of twenty-four hours was an elastic ‘tomorrow’ of two days or a week. On occasion, ‘tomorrow’ would manifest rain within mere hours ‘today’… In other words, ‘tomorrow’ for the tree translates as ‘the near future’, which is perfectly normal in a realm not ruled by a human calendar.
I also asked whether she and her many tree companions around the land were in charge of calling in the rain when precipitation was less than usual. The answer was a firm ‘yes’, with an undertone of ‘why do you even ask?’. When asked whether humans might usefully join the trees in calling in the rain, the response was enthusiastic.
Toward the end of the rainy season, I usually ask whether any more rain is coming (out here, I’m always hoping for more rain). The tree does not feed false hope - when it’s no, it’s no.
This year the monsoon finished early, but one morning, the tree had a surprise for me. Usually it is I who starts up our ‘conversations’, but this time, the tree took the initiative of a very different interaction. She produced a slender and short trickle of water - not sap, which dries into a lump - just water that would dry up within an hour or so. The trickle reached down a small distance on the bark to end at a particular spot exactly at the height of my head. Of my nose, more precisely. This spot is where I developed the habit of softly catching the tree’s very discreet fragrance, in a variation of ‘being breathed’. I was quite astonished, for in my experience, trees don’t normally let out water (and for that matter not all species let out sap). And what would be the probability of this trickle of water happening exactly at ‘my’ spot (a tiny spot on a pretty large trunk)? Something else was going on - the tree was ‘expressing’ herself specially to me, exactly in a way for me to most readily receive her ‘message’. To say I was moved is an understatement.
And this was not a one-off occurrence. The trickle of water was there again the next day, and the next, and every day, in the morning at exactly the same place. This continued for several weeks. Every day it touched - or rather struck - me deeply, in a way both bewildering and coherent. It was Real.
It is not only humans who bond with trees - it appears that trees too can bond with us…
When I returned from a few days of work away from the tree, the trickle of water was not there. Perhaps because the weather had turned cold, and because the tree felt my absence. But the next day, she was secreting the trickle again, and again the following days.
It isn’t as if she had unlimited amounts of water to donate in this unusual way - although she assured me that it was not happening at the expense of her own life needs. Now that we are in the dry cool season, she cannot make it happen every day. Yet on the days when she still can, she does it again, just a few drops - precious, sweet drops…
There may be a scientific explanation for this behavior. Many people trust a scientific explanation to exhaust all there is to know about causes and effects. But any natural human mystic perceives that behind such an explanation there are other ‘layers’ of reality that no sophisticated device or equation can decipher. And it isn’t just the material versus the spiritual. Indeed that immaterial reality expresses itself via physicality (here the tree, the water, my senses), which gives us validation of the experience.
Validation is also given to us by our human emotional, or even beyond-emotional, response. When we are present enough, sensitive enough, signs coming through from those other ‘layers’ pierce through all our identifiable emotions, and elicit in us the surge of some core ‘inner motion’, some com-motion, that has no name.
Reminds me of a less dramatic tree-talk I had a few months ago.
http://polistrasmill.com/2023/10/09/definite-and-speculative/
Thank you Enna. I always find so much contemplate through your writing.