Just past Helen’s house (although Helen doesn’t live there anymore), scattered around the front yard of Sheldon’s house (although Sheldon doesn’t live there anymore, either), the trees are talking. They are a mix of prickly needled pines and vintage oaks and an assortment of others. And they reach out and rub their long barky arms together, and lean into each other’s spaces and stories, and they sound like old women laughing.
It doesn’t seem to matter in which direction the wind may be blowing, or even if there is no wind at all. They chat quite regularly and dearly. Although they do seem to speak more crisply in winter while they’re bare-branched and restless; their voices soften to whispers in spring and summer when they’re dressed in full regalia.
Scientists are learning that most of the real communication between trees happens underground – with the touching and entwining of roots, and with shared vibrations and pulsating energy. But they do converse with each other above ground as well – simply with a different kind of energy, and sometimes through scent and color as well as touch. And sometimes they create off-putting tastes that drive predators away – and they tell all the other trees around them to do the same. And sometimes they produce more or fewer seeds and fruits and flowers to inform each other about things like droughts and freezes and controlling populations of creatures who feed from them.
Sometimes trees involve others in the conversations, too. Mushrooms and other fungi grow deep, long, underground fibrous toes that spread out and spread messages or add needed nutrients to weaker members of the trees. Many trees happily throw big parties and invite only specific bugs – who then act rather like “bouncers” and toss out unwanted, unruly, creeping crawling invaders.
Perhaps due in no small part to such active communication and sense of community, trees watch over and take care of one another their entire lives, giving particular attention and support to the least among them, the young, the struggling, the compromised.
It’s been noted that communication among trees is highly intentional, and rather remarkably slow. Unlike our human obsession with networks of ever-increasing speeds and reach, the wisdom of trees is to live quite deliberately, well-paced. Of course, trees typically enjoy much longer lives than humans. Perhaps there is a correlation.
But what pleases me best is how open and communicative trees are willing to be with us humans, too. In their presence, their energy and influence can slow our hearts, lower our blood pressure, steady our thoughts, strengthen our peace. Trees cool us, warm us, feed us, treat our illnesses and injuries, sing to us, keep our secrets, watch over us when we sleep. They exhale the very air we need and take ours into themselves in a most wonderfully intimate exchange of life breath. When we put our arms around a tree, it hugs us back (and it never lets go first).
A long time ago, in another place, I wrote this observation: “God, in his infinite wisdom, created the earth; Man, in his infinite impatience, has been rearranging it ever since.” When our human hubris breaks apart natural, wild stands of trees and forests and thins them unmercifully, without thought or reason, or even when we cultivate trees one-at-a-time as specimens, and plant them in lonely places, we strip them of their ability to communicate with each other. We break their connections; perhaps we break their hearts. Most of them don’t live nearly as long as their forested cousins.
I suspect that’s why I delight so much when I walk in our beautiful Hitchcock Woods, or simply past Sheldon’s house, and I hear the old trees talking, laughing together in their wise, creaking, voices. And they tell me their lessons: to slow down, to watch over strugglers, to always hug back, and to sometimes throw parties simply to get rid of all those little things that bother me. I suspect they think I’ll live longer if I do. I suspect they’re right.