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summer_jackelWrote this one on my recent foray to Ansel Adams wilderness, as will become abundantly clear very soon.
oh, and happy Equinox, everyone! I had a great time, horseback riding, nice company and the wonderful delicious Sebastopol Celtic music festival, what more could a little jackal want?
Driving up a high elevation road in the Sierra Nevada range, on my way to a week in the wilderness, I notice a tree. The road is narrow and difficult. At this point, it cuts across the clean white granite, glacially smoothed or laying about in enormous broken boulders, flecked with glittering black, that defines this place. It is a harsh and unforgiving terrain, and so beautiful that it doesn't half seem real.
There is far more stone than soil. We are at approximately 8,000 feet, I think. Higher up, there will barely be enough roothold for trees at all; here, the loose forest, and the tree I notice, are mostly sugar pine.
This tree, like the others, is tall and thick, pole-straight. Its scent is delicious, and the lovely, honey-colored bark flakes like good pastry. Its gray-green needles are short and fine, and the thick branches do not extend far from its heavy, round trunk. There is too much snow here in the winter for any such extravagance. I do not know the lifespan of these trees, but this one is old enough, mature. It and its kin are survivors in a place that does not make living easy.
What I notice about this tree is the white boulder that sits at the bottom of it. No mere punctuation at the root, the large and jagged piece of rock sits almost perfectly underneath the tree which has grown literally around and over it, sinewy-looking roots flowing across stone like the arms of an octopus until finally they find places to sink into the thin gray dirt. The pine, deformed and twisted at its foundation, follows the lodgepole dictates of its genetics as soon as the intruder has been cleared.
I wonder about this tree. Did its seed germinate in that difficult soil near the boulder and then with slow vegetable patience grow around it, or did snow and melting water push granite into the young tree, nearly killing it, forcing it to compromise or fall? Did stone become catastrophe or anchor?
Either way, this represents a deviation, something off course, as it were, from the Platonic ideal of sugar pine. We all know there can be no such thing, though. All of these trees are a little off in some way, a little scarred. The singularity at the root, the struggle over time to achieve growth, shape and sustenance is only more obvious here. Life flaws and marks all living things. They all tell their patient and individual stories, stone and wood, soil and observer.
And for any of us: the telling moment, the stone at the root, that unexpected occurrence that cannot be planned for, cannot be avoided, must only be grown over and endured---what is it? Hurt or benediction? I do not believe that even the tree itself, if it could speak to us, could give a certain answe
oh, and happy Equinox, everyone! I had a great time, horseback riding, nice company and the wonderful delicious Sebastopol Celtic music festival, what more could a little jackal want?
Driving up a high elevation road in the Sierra Nevada range, on my way to a week in the wilderness, I notice a tree. The road is narrow and difficult. At this point, it cuts across the clean white granite, glacially smoothed or laying about in enormous broken boulders, flecked with glittering black, that defines this place. It is a harsh and unforgiving terrain, and so beautiful that it doesn't half seem real.
There is far more stone than soil. We are at approximately 8,000 feet, I think. Higher up, there will barely be enough roothold for trees at all; here, the loose forest, and the tree I notice, are mostly sugar pine.
This tree, like the others, is tall and thick, pole-straight. Its scent is delicious, and the lovely, honey-colored bark flakes like good pastry. Its gray-green needles are short and fine, and the thick branches do not extend far from its heavy, round trunk. There is too much snow here in the winter for any such extravagance. I do not know the lifespan of these trees, but this one is old enough, mature. It and its kin are survivors in a place that does not make living easy.
What I notice about this tree is the white boulder that sits at the bottom of it. No mere punctuation at the root, the large and jagged piece of rock sits almost perfectly underneath the tree which has grown literally around and over it, sinewy-looking roots flowing across stone like the arms of an octopus until finally they find places to sink into the thin gray dirt. The pine, deformed and twisted at its foundation, follows the lodgepole dictates of its genetics as soon as the intruder has been cleared.
I wonder about this tree. Did its seed germinate in that difficult soil near the boulder and then with slow vegetable patience grow around it, or did snow and melting water push granite into the young tree, nearly killing it, forcing it to compromise or fall? Did stone become catastrophe or anchor?
Either way, this represents a deviation, something off course, as it were, from the Platonic ideal of sugar pine. We all know there can be no such thing, though. All of these trees are a little off in some way, a little scarred. The singularity at the root, the struggle over time to achieve growth, shape and sustenance is only more obvious here. Life flaws and marks all living things. They all tell their patient and individual stories, stone and wood, soil and observer.
And for any of us: the telling moment, the stone at the root, that unexpected occurrence that cannot be planned for, cannot be avoided, must only be grown over and endured---what is it? Hurt or benediction? I do not believe that even the tree itself, if it could speak to us, could give a certain answe
