“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”
– bell hooks
I am obsessed with these trees. I love the majesty of their height. I am voraciously reading about all the features the brochure outlines—their age, their names, their characteristics. I’ve chosen one of the groves within the Sequoia National Forest. It is an old growth grove, where the largest tree in volume lives. They call it General Sherman but I have a hard time believing It is a He and not a She.
To get to the grove there is a 1.2-mile descent on plateaued steps lined with benches and rest stops. As I’m walking down, I am realizing the reason for the rest stops. It will be quite a rigorous journey back up. At the bottom of the steps there is a well demarcated grove where the numerous chestnut-colored trees stand. The usual tourist sights are here. Placards with the names of the trees, fun facts about their life. Babies in strollers, families, and groups with matching t-shirts and fanny packs. They crowd the short walking path that loops around General Sherman. It is a sight to behold. It stands 250 feet tall, just 50 feet shy of the height of the Statue of Liberty, and is 30 feet in diameter. Walking among the trees, the cool, slightly moistened air lightly blows through. The light dances through the leaves creating narrow shards of light; if I believed in a Christian heaven, this is what I imagine heavenly light would look like.
The light, air, and sound are different down here in the deep of the grove. Despite the tourist chit chat, the sound is stillness. I become aware just how much my sense of sound has been deafened by the constant din of the city. Tuning out the chit chat of tourists, like tuning a dial of a transistor radio, I dial into the thundering silence of a different frequency, an older frequency. Instead of the assault of sirens, common to the busy intersection in the southern California city where I live, I a raven overhead—the wind slicing through its flight feathers, the snap of the motion thrusting her luminescent black body upward just enough height to rest on the same branch as its companion. They circle each other, moving limb to limb in a seeming game of hide and seek swirling branch to branch. To me, it seems like a pattern—as if they are conjuring something in their choreography—but as I look about me, I notice that no one sees this. iPhones and Androids are out catching angles of the large tree in front of us. It has me consider what else is happening in plain sight that I miss. There are two realities—tourists capturing images of demarcated trees named after Army Generals and Raven teachers inscribing a teaching on the sky and conjuring a message I cannot yet decipher.
Time is slower here, where a full inhale takes an entire day and my visit isn’t even a 1/16 of a blink in the span of time here for these Ancient trees. There is something about sitting amongst elders where life makes sense. I suppose that’s why I’m here. They see with a longer view of timing. Where every single thing doesn’t have as acute of a meaning as my youth would make it. Baby trees here are over twice my age.
I keep walking. Past the tourists, to another trail. Away from the crowds and pictures, I feel a pull that is common to me. It is a pull to go in a direction, in an expectant way. I rarely know why and sometimes it takes time for the why to reveal itself but I feel propelled forward. I’m walking, looking for an answer to a question that I don’t know yet.
I am watching where my eyes land. I am both in my body and observer. I’m drawn to a tree partially hollowed out and charred, yet still standing a couple hundred feet tall. I become obsessed with the fire scar of this tree. Once I see this tree’s scar up close, I look around and see others—as if seeing one would reveal the scars of all the other trees. Their scars tell a story of a time, or several times, where fire swept through this area. I look around and notice many of the trees have them, especially the largest and oldest among them. This tree I’m looking at is not blocked off by a fence like the tourist attraction trees. I suppose the difference is in a celebrity and the rest of us. I walk right up to this tree and place my hand on its scar as if to say, tell me the nature of scars. What do they teach? What is their nature? What is your life with this scar? Do they ever fully heal?
It reveals itself in three layers. Soft, thick bark, aged-like wrinkles on its ancient skin. When the fire raged through years ago, the high-water content and oils contained within it doused the flames like a fire-retardant blanket. The bark, often 2 feet thick, has yielded some, and it’s fibrous and sheds. Just below is its next layer, a thicker wood piece, now petrified and curled in by the heat of the burn. The way it splays leads me to imagine that this is where, under the pressure of the heat, the tree split open to the core, revealing its next layer. A solid wooden core. The charred layer falls off easily to the touch, still. The drippings of oils that protected the tree now form petrified icicles that I run my fingers softly across. Feeling the slight bumps, mounds, knots. Mesmerized by its texture, it blackens my fingertips and leaves a slightly sticky residue.
Turning my head upward, I am now standing inside its scar. Like a secret room with its edges curving around it, I am enveloped by it. The inner core is old to the touch. Immovable. There is no give, there is no sound when I knock my fist against it. Unlike a door that is hollowed and echoes, the sound of my knock is absorbed by silence. The core remains unchanged, solid, and whole. I keep running my fingers back and forth along each layer. I imagine that if trees communicate, their language is slow, so I take my time, moving in a different time and pacing. Each layer so different—each tells a story and serves a different purpose. Looking up towards the height of the tree, I see how much life extends even as a part of it has split open and revealed its core to the elements. There is so much more tree than this scarred part of it even as the size of this burn is at least three times as tall as me with my arms fully extended. My eyes dart back and forth from the bark to the core . . . bark Brown like my body, scars Black just like mine.
***
“There is nothing to save.” the Doctor said.
I think he is talking about all of me, even though I know he means my uterus. . . .
More to come soon….Thank you for following my Writer’s Journey.
xo Angela