The language of trees

Last week, I launched a new Substack where I offer short meditations about community, connections, and common ground, including how public schools can serve as the heart of our democracy and a source of healing. Below is my latest.

The sediment of lives, the rich layers the memories and histories of all who came before us on this marshy land make up the bedrock and the soft ground upon which I now stand. Today, I follow an uneven path that leads from gravel road down to where it bends and follows a wooded creek that ushers it deeper into the marsh. The path’s descent takes me past the place where, one spring morning, in an opening among tangled branches with budding leaves, a red-tailed hawk rested on a leafless branch. It’s left eye caught in a slither of warm sunlight filtered through the speckled forest light, the hawk humored me with casual curiosity and attention, unmoving, long enough for me to photograph the feathered head, eyes, and hooked beak staring back at me through my camera lens. I pause to consider if the hawk has given tacit consent to this disruption of our communion. Soundlessly, I take the photo. I ask for grace and forgiveness.

What language do we speak by our presence and our being that is larger than what we can speak with pharynx, larynx, tongue and teeth, or uvula dangling at the end of our soft palate? When I am in the presence of oak or cedar, my arms folded around their coarse or shaggy trunk, what is the language of our communion? What language do we speak?

Continuing my walk through the marsh, passing the tree that holds the memory of hawk and me, I imagine and feel the presence of all those carried along this way by boots, shoes, and bare feet—the soles of souls. They settle all around me and the nearby underbrush and trees thick as early morning fog in autumn, neighborly and familiar, they hearten me.