The following is an e-mail correspondence I had with my academic advisor:
Sir,
I had an interesting experience the other day that I wanted to share with someone. I hope you don’t mind this short read.
Over the summer months, one of the ways I occupy my mind is by going back and rereading some of the texts from the previous year’s courses. I usually pick texts that I found to be difficult or frustrating, that I did not have enough time for, or that I found interesting. This summer, one of the things that I am rereading is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. My initial reaction to this book was frustration. The book read like the stream of consciousness from the crazy-cat-lady that lives down the street. However, I remembered there being little gems of phrase embedded here and there so I decided to give it another try.
The other day I was taking my son for a walk in the fresh air. I was thinking about chapter two of Annie’s book and about seeing. Specifically, I was thinking about seeing the “tree with the lights in it”. When I initially came upon this passage, I imagined coming up over a hill and seeing the sunset blazing behind an enormous tree, turning the branches into a stained glass pattern of green and fire. On this walk however, the mid-day sun offered me a different interpretation. I was marveling at the way the sun made some of the leaves look lighter green while the shadows made some look dark green. For a moment my eyes relaxed their focus and my mind uncoupled meaning from sensory input; the trees ceased to be leaves blowing in the wind and became a lava lamp of greens swirling together around me. Then it happened…
I have never been afraid of a tree before. Up ahead on the side of the trail was a massive, giant, behemoth of a tree. I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of this living creature. This being is easily sixty times my own size and at least double my age. I feared its mass and I feared its knowledge. The tree is connected to a root network that is ever more complex and interconnected than is my own humanoid neural network. The first consciousness to arise as an epiphenomena above the complexity of its own network was not mankind but rather the green consciousness, the interconnected root systems of all living plants.
I felt overwhelmed, nearly terrified, in the presence of this enormous creature. Had I been alone, I may well have turned back on my path and left this hulking beast to itself, but my travel companion compelled me to keep moving forward and to show no fear. As I neared the tree, I wondered whether this old sentry would find me worthy to pass or if it would reach down with its leafy fingers and pull me up into its branches where it would shake me until I flung apart into my more basic elements of dirt, clay, and rock.
When I stepped into the deep shadow cast by this tree, I was brushed by the mysterious arcane powers that trees have a profound knowledge of and that man only ever seems to be able to glimpse from the corner of an eye. Stepping through the penumbra was a phenomenological shock that nearly stopped my breath. I was no longer in the same reality I had just been in. I was somewhere else, someplace separate from anywhere I had ever been before. I was in a pocket universe where reality is bent by the will of the tree. The tree was subject and I was object. I was isolated from my world, from my sun, alone in the cool clutches of the tree…
The tree must have judged me worthy to pass for I left the shadow unmolested to continue on my walk. I have never been afraid of a tree before.
Sir,
I had an interesting experience the other day that I wanted to share with someone. I hope you don’t mind this short read.
Over the summer months, one of the ways I occupy my mind is by going back and rereading some of the texts from the previous year’s courses. I usually pick texts that I found to be difficult or frustrating, that I did not have enough time for, or that I found interesting. This summer, one of the things that I am rereading is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. My initial reaction to this book was frustration. The book read like the stream of consciousness from the crazy-cat-lady that lives down the street. However, I remembered there being little gems of phrase embedded here and there so I decided to give it another try.
The other day I was taking my son for a walk in the fresh air. I was thinking about chapter two of Annie’s book and about seeing. Specifically, I was thinking about seeing the “tree with the lights in it”. When I initially came upon this passage, I imagined coming up over a hill and seeing the sunset blazing behind an enormous tree, turning the branches into a stained glass pattern of green and fire. On this walk however, the mid-day sun offered me a different interpretation. I was marveling at the way the sun made some of the leaves look lighter green while the shadows made some look dark green. For a moment my eyes relaxed their focus and my mind uncoupled meaning from sensory input; the trees ceased to be leaves blowing in the wind and became a lava lamp of greens swirling together around me. Then it happened…
I have never been afraid of a tree before. Up ahead on the side of the trail was a massive, giant, behemoth of a tree. I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of this living creature. This being is easily sixty times my own size and at least double my age. I feared its mass and I feared its knowledge. The tree is connected to a root network that is ever more complex and interconnected than is my own humanoid neural network. The first consciousness to arise as an epiphenomena above the complexity of its own network was not mankind but rather the green consciousness, the interconnected root systems of all living plants.
I felt overwhelmed, nearly terrified, in the presence of this enormous creature. Had I been alone, I may well have turned back on my path and left this hulking beast to itself, but my travel companion compelled me to keep moving forward and to show no fear. As I neared the tree, I wondered whether this old sentry would find me worthy to pass or if it would reach down with its leafy fingers and pull me up into its branches where it would shake me until I flung apart into my more basic elements of dirt, clay, and rock.
When I stepped into the deep shadow cast by this tree, I was brushed by the mysterious arcane powers that trees have a profound knowledge of and that man only ever seems to be able to glimpse from the corner of an eye. Stepping through the penumbra was a phenomenological shock that nearly stopped my breath. I was no longer in the same reality I had just been in. I was somewhere else, someplace separate from anywhere I had ever been before. I was in a pocket universe where reality is bent by the will of the tree. The tree was subject and I was object. I was isolated from my world, from my sun, alone in the cool clutches of the tree…
The tree must have judged me worthy to pass for I left the shadow unmolested to continue on my walk. I have never been afraid of a tree before.