I read an article a few days ago about trees, specifically about an artist’s efforts to create a tree alphabet. Smitten, I was. So I downloaded those treesy word guts and began typing them onto the page of a document to see how my name and the names of my beloveds, even the word “tree” itself, looked in this font. I typed the first sentence of my Writing on the Landscape book in tree font.
Using the color version of this alphabet, I created a photograph for each letter of the tree alphabet. Then I began to group them into words in single photographs.
What does a snapshot of a name look like made only of trees?
Yesterday I had a lively conversation with my special pod of others who had read this article. We discussed communication, listening to trees, and how to nurture deeper relationships with individual trees, and groves or forests of trees. I’m usually the one who brings this up, week by week in our meetings – related to whatever we’ve read or not. Because, well, it’s simple: I am obsessed with trees. We also amply shared about our individual experiences listening to trees.
In this morning’s group – a whole other Zoom-room full of people with a totally different reason for coming together, someone read Maya Angelou’s wonderful inaugural speech from years ago. Then we were offered a writing prompt: “What are the trees saying to you?” I could not believe the synchronicity!
Unedited, here is what I quickly jotted down in response:
They’re saying: settle, root yourself deeply, and listen to us. We mean ‘listen’ as … slowing down. Being utterly, vulnerably, and unabashedly present. See rhythms. Feel interconnectedness with us and with all beings. Use the Earth’s magma as your guidepost. Let birdsong fill your heart. Allow wildness to buoy you. Show your fierce tenderness. Allow light to suffuse your striated clouds within and create exquisite sunrises and sunsets of compassionate kindness for all to enjoy and by which they’ll be blessed. Be still within as you offer your blazingly lovely service to the world.
Let it be!
Tree alphabet pictured here created by Katie Holten.