As the Winter turned into Spring I have been getting outside as time permits using my forestry skills to fell some trees for trail clearance, thinning and mushroom log harvest and cutting some cedar for construction projects. We are reopening a trail next to Cold Creek which hasn’t been used for so long it’s got mature white pines on it, but the main trail through the grassy bowl is so eroded it needs some well-earned rest. At the top of the new trail I felled a large spruce that had been killed by the recent Spongy Moth outbreak so the tractor and trailer could make a full turn. I am so grateful to have taken some basic training using a chainsaw for the Hedgerows for Dormice project I ran for PTES back in 2009-11. In another life I might have liked to be an arborist.
I love this work: its physicality, being outdoors and the historical connection to woodsmen who once felled trees with stone axes. Still, I actually find cutting down trees emotionally difficult. There is satisfaction in applying skills I have learned and doing a good job; landing the tree where you want, pride in the precision of the cut, problem solving when it doesn’t quite go your way and, even though you try to minimise risk, there’s that frisson of excitement. Yet while part of me wants to pump my fist, another part is sad when the tree falls.
I hated trees when I was young. If I went near one my nose would start streaming. If I climbed one I would get a rash and have breathing difficulties. Thankfully such strong allergic reactions have disappeared and now I feel more at home in the woods (in the UK- still working on Canada) than anywhere else. I felt so strongly about the felling of 75 Lombardy Poplar’s at Canbury GArdens in Kingston-Upon-Thames back in 1996 that I spent 6 hours in a police custody cell. Love of trees is responsible for my career as an ecological scientist, but I also embraced different forms of knowing by beginning training in the Druid tradition. I’ve now returned to embrace the tradition again to complement the scientist in me.
Both ecology and Druidry have taught me that its important to strive for a good relationship with the natural world, since humans are not separate from it.
“I was a listener in woods,
Instructions of Cormac, § 7 from OBOD/Ethics in Druidry
I was a gazer at stars,
I was blind where secrets were concerned,
I was silent in a wilderness“
In North America, Indigenous Knowledge also teaches us the importance of being in right relationships with the land.
“It’s not the land which is broken, but our relationship to land. That’s the work of artists, storytellers, parents. We braid sweetgrass to come into right relationship.”
Robin Wall Kimmer from Our Living Waters.ca
My practice when preparing to engage in tree harvesting has been to spend some time before I begin work with a short meditation to help adjust my mind so that I can see the tree as a relation, as a brother or sister. This is actually in opposition to the way you want to go: to work fast, to think dispassionately, to see the tree as a resource for your project. So to open yourself in humility and recognise trees as extended family is an acceptance of the gift the tree is giving. I would then offer some words in gratitude to the life of the tree, the seasons and sunrises and sunsets it has seen, and speak of the good things that will come from the gifts of its wood. I share some water and sometimes food, and offer tobacco or cedar leaves.
Its interesting how these small acts, that don’t take more than 10 minutes, begin to work on you. I’m now reflecting that it’s not enough just to honour the tree in moments before felling a tree, that this small acknowledgement of right relationship has to go further. I walk through the woods and feel an enormous sense of wellbeing, and perhaps even take in a spot of forest bathing, but I feel the need to do more, regularly, to acknowledge the enormous gratitude and respect I have for trees and the gifts they bring to our lives.
One of the ways to do this is through ritual. We are now regularly observing the Stations of the Sun in the Wheel of The Year, sometimes privately and sometimes with community, but always with trees. Its also working in support of the lives of our tree brethren. We have just planted a bunch of Asian pear trees on the property from our grafting workshop last year and have some basket willow, a gift from our very kind friend Johnny Suderman after a basket workshop, which will also be going in the ground soon. I also can’t wait to plant another hedgerow!
What’s also interesting to me about this shift is how a small shift in attention can set up bigger changes in behaviour. More on this anon.
“…the kind of attention we bring to bear on the world changes the nature of the world we attend to.
Dr Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary,
But as a writer and storyteller, I also can spread love and respect for trees. On May 9th, I’ll be telling at an online concert called Stories of Course for ‘graduates’ of Storytelling Toronto’s Introduction to Storytelling course with the wonderful Merylyn Peringer. You won’t be surprised to learn what my story will be about.
James T Jones 