Thoughts on Trees

Just found this essay by Herman Hesse - his thoughts and feeling about trees.  Says it all really...and so beautifully

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

 A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
 

What Trees have to say...

 “For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
 

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.  Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree.  He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”     

                                                           Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Whispers on the Wind

 One of my earliest memories is of standing at my bedroom window gazing at the line of distant blue-grey mountains where I ran free in my imagination.  I spent a lot of time in those hills with a woollen rug rather than a carpet of grass beneath my feet. I longed to be among them, in the fresh air with the sky stretching above me as far as my eyes could see.  My room was at the front, over my father's newsagents and the chatter of the customers and sounds of suburban traffic drifted endlessly through the window and up the stairs.  

When I grew older, I escaped to the park alone and walked by the duck pond, following the paths that meandered under the trees and zig-zagged around the flower beds.  I loved those green places but they were bitter-sweet for they gave me a taste of nature that whetted my appetite so that I hungered for more, much more.  I wanted open spaces, miles and miles of freedom, rugged mountains, stone paths that crunched under my feet, chasms and boulders, clear flowing streams, grassy banks and meadows touched by gentle breezes that made the flowers nod and sway.  I wanted land, water and air all around me. The park was an escape, a place of solitude and quiet where I was happy and sad at the same time, mixed up feelings of childish pleasure co-existing with a deep longing, a mature feeling too complicated for one so young.  It was like a stone lodged in my gut that reminded me of its presence at regular intervals.  

As the years passed, I grew to understand this feeling.  I was a wild child.  Something called to me.  It was inside me yet also outside of me.  There was a tenor in the air and I loved its voice.  And I came to recognise that my father heard it too.  I saw that look in his eye as he stopped to listen to a song-bird, looked at a flower or stood with arms folded, leaning on the shop counter watching the rain bouncing off the pavement outside.

He came from a long line of farming people who were (and a few still are) embedded in the land.  The earth was not only under their nails but their skin as well, deep in their hearts and souls.  And so it is with me.  Some, across several generations, were torn from the land, forced from their home by economic necessity, myself included.  It is a terrible wrench and there is much work to do in putting down roots in a new place, not only physical but psychological and emotional too.  It is easy enough to pass your days somewhere but not really dwell there. 

I lived in another city for many years but never felt rooted in the place. Just as in my early years, I spent long periods of time in its parks and gardens but that familiar longing tugged at my insides and something called on the wind.  I began going on camping and walking holidays to the Lake District and Wales but still the voice whispered "come away."  In the end, I did.

I now live in a rural area amid hills and fields. Birds and small wild creatures are part of my daily life.  I feel my roots sinking more deeply into the earth with each passing day and my soul soars up among the branches of the trees and up into the star-filled skies.  This is freedom. 

The voice is still on the wind, it floats around me.  It is closer and I feel its breath against my cheek.  It whispers a different message now, its tells me that I am home.