The Magic of the Sycamore Tree

 Our souls are attracted to what has soul.

~Jean Shinoda Bolen

Around a curve on a fast moving road I take at least once a week is this stunning sycamore tree that I have never, not once noticed until a few days ago. There was something about the setting, about the little fence enclosing it, the way the burnt orange leaves sprawled over the sidewalk and the street, how the ground fog made everything around it recede, bringing its grandness into sharp focus. It took nearly two blocks for the brain zap of the mind catching up with what the eyes had seen and I suddenly hit the brakes, found a place to make a u-turn, and wound my way through a sprawling mostly empty parking lot of a large office building. I walked to the tree and snapped a few pictures, got back in the car and finished my drive home. It wasn't until I was looking at the photos later at home that something about this tree took hold in me and I could not stop thinking about it. 

How much of life is lost this way, in the spaces between what is seen and what is recorded? 

I am a tree lover. In my own small-ish, local way I have tried to protect trees. I have hugged them, sat with my back to them for long periods of time, felt them all the way deep into the earth at the same time I could feel my own firm roots next to them. I have journeyed through them, once to receive my main totem animal, the red-tailed hawk. I have written letters, made phone calls advocating for them. And I have deeply mourned those that have been lost, for a myriad of reasons, including what capitalism calls progress. I am not Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a one-hundred-and-eighty-foot tall, fifteen-hundred-year-old redwood tree she named Luna for two years to save it and other old growth trees. But I do seem to form relationships with certain trees almost as though they were loved ones. Jean Shinoda Bolden, author of Like a Tree and many other wonderful books, would definitely say I am a tree person. 

There was the willow tree of my childhood, and the three black walnut trees. The trio of birches outside the home where we raised our daughters. The old growth oaks that had lived who knows how many dozens of years, centuries even, in the cleft where two hills met that were first killed and then bulldozed in order to make a road to a new housing project that would sprawl all over the beautiful hilltops. Everyday going to work I drove by them and everyday brought pain that I did not know what to do with, grief for the violent death of the trees and scrub bushes, the whole little eco system nestled there, for the wildlife that called that little grove home.

There was the hugely sprawling oak that lined the seasonal creek at the park next to where I live now, with two massive trunks, like twins, splitting right at ground level, that went over two years ago in a strong windstorm. I could not bear to go near the park for months on end, the emptiness, the staggering hole, the breach in the canopy of trees hurt too much. She was the first tree I had dared to hug right out in the open in public. Though hug might not be the right word. I would lay my body full-on against her and spread my arms but they barely curved she was so big. It was more like a hold than a hug, and she was the one doing the holding. What I felt in my own body when I did so time and again is indescribable. It was pure energy. As though I was entering the great dark mystery of both tree and earth and I became one with them. 

There was the tree lost a year ago from near my front door that was visible from my living room and bedroom windows. With its red leaves and proliferous dainty pink and white blossoms in spring, its coven of birds daily, doves and house finches, goldfinches and hummingbirds. Sometimes in spring robins and cedar waxwings by the dozens. The occasional red-shouldered hawk. This tree helped me transition out of darkness when I first moved in. She had sustained and nurtured both my daughter and I, but later especially my daughter, whose illness has shrunk her world almost to non existence. 

Then there are the hundred plus redwoods that line the west side of the complex where I live that have been failing for years; each year they grow more brown than green; each year more sparse. If ever there was a love affair with trees, it would be with these gorgeous, gentle giants. So great is the pain, and the fact that they are not insular, that they are a microcosm of the loss and pain evident everywhere on our planet, our home, that it's hard to write or talk about them. Sorrow. Grief. Fear. None of it covers the whole of the feeling of unbearable loss, of powerlessness. Except to say this. Grief is love. Without love there would be nothing to grieve. And it is that love that can hold us through the grief, sustain us through the sorrow, through all that is already here, all that is coming. Fierce, consuming love. 

I returned to the sycamore tree the next morning and the next, the last time just before a powerful storm was to come through that I knew would strip her of many of her leaves. Each time my awe grew, each time I saw a new part of her, a new aspect to her is-ness, her being-ness. The large hole on one side of the trunk at the ground, large enough for a small child to fit into. The smaller holes on the other sides. The exquisite coloring and patterning of the bark. The chaos when looking up through her canopy. The mere size of the five-pointed leaves. How different she appears in sunlight, in fog, in wind. Not to mention all that is invisible and also just as real; not to mention the soul of her. 

Depending on the cultivar, the sycamore can be stately, like this one or others I've seen in nature that grow wild and unruly, with limbs twisting and turning in surprising directions, sometimes growing straight out like long, long arms, other times resting in quiet repose on the ground, as though part of the tree has collapsed though it hasn't. It is simply its habit of growth. To see these dotted on a landscape is something to behold. 

The sycamore was sacred to the ancient Egyptians. They like low lying areas, where streams or water flows or gathers. In Nature-Speak, Ted Andrews writes that the appearance of a sycamore often means there is nourishment about. They are gift bearers, gifts both large and small. 

He writes: 

        

                  The sycamore awakens the feminine energies of intuition,

                  beauty and nourishment all around us. It can open us to

                  the energies of love and Nature and all their magnificent

                  aspects. The sycamore will augment all connections to

                  Nature, and its appearance in our life encourages us to

                  draw upon the realm of Nature for health, abundance

                  and inspiration.

        

What a magnanimous Midwinter gift. 

~💗~