Look at the Trees

And I thought over again

My small adventures

As with a shore-wind I drifted out

In my kayak

And thought I was in danger,

My fears,

those small ones

That I thought so big

For all the vital things

I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only

One great thing,

The only thing:

To live to see in huts and on journeys

The great day that dawns,

And the light that fills the world.

-Inuit Song

“Look at the trees, look at the trees” my grandmother, Roselle (Riz) would say as we drove through the windy roads of Yosemite National Park. They were majestic blurs of green through the windshield, as they often were when she walked briskly on a path through the woods. Age slowed her pace and, as time went on, the clearest memories are of her holding court in her room at the Ahwahnee Hotel, the tips of the trees dancing through the window as she moved her hands with great animation.

I began Ludlow Falls loop hike with gratitude for the joy my grandmother still brings to my heart, with her shouts “Look at the trees” forever ringing in my memory. And I also held the wisdom my mom, Jane, her daughter, recently shared on an evening walk, wisdom shared from one of her photography teachers: Notice how people walk so quickly on hiking trails, my mom said. They miss so much. Slow down—it changes your perspective.

What does it mean to really look at the trees?

I realize now that I chose to focus on trees because it’s challenging to be still. I have always been drawn to water because of the obvious and dramatic movement of this life-giving source—-like my grandmother, I am often tempted to walk with a certain resolute speed and direction. However, the movement of energy and currents hidden from view is part of the trees story too. But it takes being still enough to see it, to feel it, to hear it.

So perhaps I am beginning to understand just a bit what Suzanne Simard writes in her book Finding the Mother Tree, “This is not a book about how we can save the trees. This is a book about how the trees might save us” (p.6). Save us from our blindness to the light that fills the world. Save us from walking the path too quickly that we miss seeing the wisdom that’s been there all along. Save us from fear, and in doing so, liberate the voice within that can sing out with clarity and hope.