than something that’s alive. When I began to look at a tree’s acorns, fl owers and pollen, I realized that this tree is doing what we do: it’s born, grows, has offspring and dies; it seeks air, nutrients and light. Trees all have a fascinating master plan for survival and reproduction. Some trees can build an architectural structure that grows 150 feet high and can withstand 100-mile-an-hour winds.
How do you suggest that a newbie tree-watcher start learning how to see trees more intimately? Read a book like Seeing Trees, then get up, go out and observe trees in real time, at different times of the year and track what they do. Take pencil and paper and draw them, or take pictures. Start by exploring trees in your backyard or a nearby park.
Share a quality magnifying glass to
encourage youngsters to get closer to the trees, too. Challenge them to fi nd fl owers, fruit or spots where last year’s leaves fell off. Kids love that. I visit schools and have kids go out and collect fallen tree debris that we look at together.
What makes some of your favorite trees so distinctive? Red maples make an early entrance in spring, their fl owers appearing before the leaves, and drop their “helicopter” seeds in spring to germinate before anything can eat them. In spring, an entire hill will turn red with these maples, but it’s not their leaves; it’s the trees’ fl owers, getting ready to drop their showy red dresses on the ground before anything else is blooming. You can learn a lot about trees by seeing what’s on the ground through their life cycles. Sycamore, for example, has both male and female fl owers. The female fl owers develop into fruiting seedpods that dry out and hang on through winter until a spring wind blows them apart.
Rather than seeing trees as dead in winter, what can we look for? Trees are very much alive in winter. When leaves fall off, they leave behind little pointed leaf buds. You can cut them open and fi nd tiny green leaves encapsulated which remain unfrozen, waiting to open up in the spring. Twigs
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in winter show leaf scars where the leaves dropped. We can also witness the diverse life in and on trees in all seasons. That includes bugs, plants, fungi and parasites, in addition to the animals that nest in them and eat their fruits and nuts. I once found a round ball on an oak tree that turned out to be a wasp gall for its offspring, its larvae hanging in the middle.
How are tree-viewing skills transferrable to other aspects of our lives? The skill of observation is vital: moving from looking to seeing. At a party, you can just mindlessly chatter with people or you can really see them—what their bodies, gestures and emotions are communicating. Labels and names get in the way of seeing things as they are. Stop labeling things or worrying about what they are called; as in meditation, just relax into observing, to embrace things as they are.
Connect with freelance writer April Thompson, in Washington, D.C., at
AprilWrites.com.
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