These final few days of official winter have ushered in spring clouds along with the winds. We have not been blessed with rain, but the intermittent gray veil offers hope, if not much else.
This has been the driest winter anyone remembers, and here at Red Willow, memories are long. The elders here possess not merely institutional and cultural memory, but an ancestral sort as well, the kind handed down orally from generation to generation in ways both casual and sacred, the kind that outlives and outperforms the accuracy of the dominant culture’s so-called “written record” by several country miles.
Soon, we will have to make our way down the gorge to Santa Fe. That will tell us, beyond any doubt, what we can expect for the warmer months: If the Quartzite (part of the Rio Grande) is as low and slow as we have reason to believe it will be, rationing for the fields and gardens will be brutal this year. In the meantime, we continue to pray for snow and rain, and hope against hope for an early and abundant monsoon season.
Still, the Gorge, long a part of these people’s original indigenous lands, tells more hopeful stories, too.
The river is lined on either side by steeply banked mountainsides, a winding canyon that ebbs and flows its way downhill alongside the waters themselves, a shelf carved out on the southeast side for the highway. It’s a haven in winter for eagles, snow geese, the occasional heron or sandhill crane, and a multitude of smaller birds, those of the waters and those mostly of the air. Time was, mountain goats put in regular appearances, as well as coyotes and foxes, but they are scarce now; too much human habitation, and far, far too much traffic has sent them looking for quieter homes now.
But the trees . . . the trees remain, some bent and bowed, some broken and felled completely, yet most standing strong even in the face of storm and drought. Some are positively ancient, sentries that have stood since before the long-lost grandparents of the oldest yet alive today remembers.
And some are new . . . and some, reborn.
Among the beings we call trees are elders, too — old growth stands, some now reduced only to a remaining warrior or two. Their trunks are thick and stout and solid, the evidence of decades, even centuries of existence. Where human bodies become lined with wrinkles, the trees instead shed most of theirs, leaving behind smooth elephantine skin that wrinkles hard only in the join between trunk and branch, like folds of skin at the point where an ancient pachyderm’s leg meets its torso. As with us, their bodies bear scars, old wounds in a skin that never heals quite to its former state. But the scars carry their own beauty, that of worldly experience and even wisdom.
The old ones have much to teach us; our cultures have always known the truth of this matter. Contemporary dominant culture regards that which is old as dispensable, disposable. It is not so much that what we now call popular culture is reserved for youth — that has always been the case — but that in a disposable society where novelty and convenience are prized above nearly all else, that which has longevity is considered dull and boring. It has worsened in recent years, of course, with the advent of an electronic entertainment cycle that moves at warp speed 24/7/366, but the underlying infirmity is with the culture itself, not how it happens to manifest in any given generation.
Our parents complained of this phenomenon; so, too, did their parents. As we age, we come to see the truth of their words, as we find increasing value in old ways that went unappreciated in our own youth. And if we are honest, we know that it is not a question of wisdom automatically attaching itself to age — we have both known too many people, of every age, whose lives were marked most by folly — but that experience itself is the greatest teacher, and that those with the longest experience have had the opportunity to acquire the most knowledge.
Occasionally, they acquire wisdom with it.
The elders of the trees teach us wisdom by example, even those that our own kind dismiss as “dead.” In some instances, “death” is a complete misnomer: A tree without leaves in winter may rebloom in spring; it is not dead, but dormant, the long low sleep that in animals we call hibernation. This, obviously, is not death.
But by our usual standards, some, such as a few among the ancient cottonwoods down the Gorge, are indeed “dead” — there is no longer any living tissue in their great old bodies, and they long ago leafed out for the last time.
And yet . . . and yet . . . .
They are still of use, they still have a role to play, a role that may serve the world for generations yet: as perches for birds on the hunt, as shelter for avian nests and other small animals, as fodder for homes.
As objects of art.
Are they truly dead? Or do their spirits live on in a way that we mortals only dimly comprehend?
The trees teach us that age is not uselessness, and that death is not an end.
But perhaps my favorite examples, at this time of year, are the ones that are both: both obviously dead and just as clearly alive, those who stand with and without their won animating spirit, and continue to shelter other creatures even as they bloom, in part, anew.
It is the best of rebirth, this ability to straddle the line between life and death and succeed at both beyond our wildest and most puny human imaginings. This is common among the cottonwoods, this ability to rebirth themselves anew. They are aided, of course, by earth and air and water, yes, even by fire, but they are masters at identifying a smoldering ember, a spark of life near extinguished, and coaxing it into wild unfettered existence once again. Our lands here are punctuated by such spirits, those that inhabit both sides of the threshold in one body, and they remind us that we have more to do.
The cottonwoods — indeed, the trees, all among their kind — show us how to live, how to be. They are among the most ancient of warriors, spirits whose lives far outstrip our own short existence even when they eventually succumb to their own brand of mortality. But they teach us more than the fact of mere life; they show us ancient strength, reborn, and the way to stand tall and strong and nurturing of future generations, on either side of that great mysterious line.
~ Aji
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