After my first visit I read something that shocked me–in this garden there lives a Sequoia, which was planted in 1961 and is now about 50-60’ high. I was almost unbelieving and found it an interesting coincidence that I sat beneath it the first time I chose to just be present with all that was growing there, to silently admire the trees and other plants and feel the spirit of the place. Each time I came back to the garden, I sat beneath that tree. The informational plaque beside it was in Swedish and it took a while to find someone who could translate it for me, but it said nothing about how and why the Sequoia seed was brought to Visby, and that was my main interest. I’ll try to email and learn more. I found a sibling to Yosemite Valley in a Norwegian fjord and now a tree from the Sierra; so many connections. There was also a Dawn Redwood, a species I’d not heard of but that turns out to be one of the three species of which the Sequoia and Coast Redwoods in California are the other two making up the genus. The Dawn variety is native to China, a curiosity to say the least, and approached extinction but is now being planted in many places such as this botanical garden. It did not look like the Coast Redwood and I suspect wasn’t altogether healthy. The Sequoia, on the other hand, was flourishing.

Photos by Author – Craig Brestrup

Photo by SaiKrishna Saketh Yellapragada on Unsplash

Photo by Tapio Haaja on Unsplash

            But back to Little Swan: Twig and I sat in the crook of the Creek’s bend for a half hour and opened ourselves to its spirit. It is one of those places that surpasses lovely and moves into ethereal and assures me that I belong there, that anyone with a receptive soul belongs there. I wonder if luxury-seeking among people is a displaced version of the richness is found in places like this? Although in a sense a simple place—to the eyes, but complex intrinsically—it could be aptly called luxuriant. I feel better when I’m in places like this even half-consciously and when more fully giving my attention we become one in spirit. The Creek made its turn and moved on south-westerly and as the trail climbed the hillside and I looked down, it merged with the leafing trees.

Photo by Eleonora Patricola on Unsplash

Photo by Thomas Haas on Unsplash

Late yesterday afternoon I sat under a tree in camp reading. I had noticed that things were going on within the tree, which is similar to but not a shrub oak, about the same height and density. There were conversations in the form of clicks and occasional particles of moisture would land on my arms that I could only imagine coming from the clicking creatures, bug pee, perhaps, if bugs peed. I had looked and noticed a few cicada-like insects on the limbs, not moribund but definitely lethargic; they moved in response to my approaching finger but not much and not far. They were about an inch and a quarter long with veined, transparent wings that extended beyond their posterior and with orange delineations around their dark bodies. Occasionally it seemed these were joined by others, but I wasn’t aware of any leaving. I figured they had business to do and left them alone. After a while a small gray bird landed directly above my head and began preening and cleaning his bill on the limb. He didn’t seem on a search for a meal but the cicadas (I know they aren’t common here but that’s what they look like to me) weren’t sure and were far more alert than I’d given them credit for. A space 2-3’ in radius erupted around the bird and dozens of cicadas sped away, the bird seemingly oblivious. He moved to another nearby limb, another eruption. He had a game going. But then he left, perhaps closer to me than he liked. I had not seen more than a fraction of these insects; their stillness and color tended to blend them into the tree and shadows, besides which I am never as observant as I would wish. Such abundance that I had not fully noticed is part of what interests me in this encounter, but more than that, the bugs had not seen me as a predator despite my size, but they did the see the tiny bird as one despite his size. Maybe this isn’t so surprising since humans rarely fly into trees snatching insects for meals and birds do. But I had misread their seeming lethargy and unawareness; before the bird arrived, they didn’t need to display energy and attentiveness beyond noting and classifying my presence (“tall, two-legged, nonflying, white-haired creature, not an insectivore”), but they were not dozing. In spite of appearances, they knew what was going on around them. Surprises never end.

Once I embraced a giant pine in order to sniff its bark. Jeffrey Pines are said to smell a bit like vanilla but I couldn’t detect it. I did the same another time with an incense cedar, hugging and sniffing. Both times I noticed as I drew my face back an involuntary stroking of my hands on the tree, gently, as I would a loved person. It seemed simultaneously strange to find myself doing this and yet utterly appropriate. Strokes are for the doer as much as the recipient; I felt tender toward those trees and their silent, solemn aliveness.

I think it nearly impossible to pay close attention to trees, whether individually or as forests, and not be affected. So steadfast and graceful, they easily become companions. It seems a miracle they can stand so high, waver in the wind and remain upright. Were I the creator, I’d never have had the imagination to try something that seems so improbable. A freshly fallen, still living tree evokes sympathy and a frustrated wish to make it right again. While a long dead “nursery” tree supporting a linear stand of youngsters makes me smile and say thanks on their behalf.

As John Muir followed sheep up into the Sierra Nevada on his initial foray 141 years ago, he mentioned that “Another conifer was met today—incense cedar…” That “was met” tells that this was encounter with individual life and recognized as such. “I feel strangely attracted to this tree…It would be delightful to be storm-bound beneath one of these noble, hospitable, inviting old trees…”

Earlier than this, in the seventeenth century, an adolescent was converted and brought to God by a tree. He became Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a monk admired for his steady “practice of the presence of God” and his humility. Almost four decades after his conversion he described the experience to his Abbe who recorded the conversation. “One winter’s day he saw a tree stripped of its leaves, and considered that sometime afterwards these leaves would appear again, followed by flowers and fruit. He then received a lofty awareness of the providence and power of God which never left him.” Well, of course. Who wouldn’t tend to react that way if he really thought about it? Botany and theology become one. (The Practice of the Presence of God)

J. Krishnamurti seems once to have spent the entirety of several days entranced and enlightened by a tree. At sunrise it became golden leaves filled with life, and “…as the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter—what matters is that beautiful tree—an extraordinary quality begins to spread all over the land, over the river.” Each hour reveals new tree qualities: brightness, liveliness, somberness, quietness, dignity. One may sit in the shade beneath it, “…never feeling lonely with the tree as your companion.” At sunset finally the tree rests. “If you establish a relationship with it, then you have relationship with mankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of the world. But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity…” Later, ending a meditation on the human propensity to kill, he extends this thought: “If we could, and we must, establish a deep, long abiding relationship with nature—with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass, and the fast moving clouds—then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever.” (My apology to the publisher from whose book I drew these thoughts; I have lost the reference.)

Even Martin Buber, who recognized Nature as a distinct realm of Thou relatedness without being very comfortable there himself, spoke about trees. He knew they could be “It,” a species, a botanical member of an ecosystem, just lumber. “In all this the tree remains my object…It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it.” And more: “The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it—only in a different way.” (I and Thou)

To paraphrase an old television commercial, “These are not your father’s trees.” (The vast majority of those have been clear-cut.) But they are real trees and possible relations. I have been to the forest, and with Muir and the others, I have met these trees.

Photo by Akshay Nanavati on Unsplash