Monday, January 4. We have made it past the solstice, and even in a dreary winter with just a touch of snow, the light is brighter, the lengthening of days small but perceptible. We are entering a new season, trusting once again that the cycle of the life will carry us into the coming year. The sap is rising in the trees, and the flowers of spring will come.
As we approach Tu B’Shvat, the holiday celebrating trees which comes on the 15th of Shvat – this year, beginning the evening of Sunday, January 16 – we go into the woods and honor the beech, oak and maple communities which thrive there and provide a nurturing home for animals, mushrooms and other plants which sustain us. As the sap rises in apple, pear, peach, plum, and pawpaw, we are grateful for their bounty, soon to come as the seasons turn. If we are in Israel, we honor the oaks which anchor the hillside Batha (chaparral), or fruiting olives, pomegranates, walnuts and carobs.
Two themes come to mind: Suzanne Simard[1] and David George Haskell[2] write of the complex and wholly interconnected networks of which trees are a part, mycorrhizae filaments intertwined with their roots, sharing nutrients and information needed for survival, and the host of insects, birds, microbes, mammals, and herbs supported by their living presence and their decay. Robin Wall Kimmerer[3] writes of trees as gift-givers, of nuts and shelter, fruits and shade, which sustain us, and bind us up in webs of gratitude and obligation, as we nurture them in return.
As we enter the third year of pandemic-induced inward-turning, may we make progress toward emerging transformed. May we see even more clearly the web of interconnection that is our natural world, and the obligation we have to return the life-sustaining gifts we receive from it, most especially the trees. – Kirby
Our next walking meditation will be Rosh Chodesh Adar I, Wednesday, February 2. Rain or snow or shine! Contact us for location.
[1] Simard, Suzanne, Finding the Mother Tree, Knopf, 2021
[2] Haskell, David George, The Songs of Trees, Penguin Books, 2017
[3] Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass, Milkweed Editions, 2013
Rosh Chodesh Cleveland 