BEGINNING AGAIN

It has been a long time since I posted a blog piece, which is reflective of the period of time that has passed since something caught my attention in a significant enough way to want to share my thoughts. I have been considering writing a piece ever since mid-August of this year when a so-called straight line wind storm toppled a 10,000 pound oak tree on our home, causing over $100,000 worth of damage as it landed in the middle of my husband, Dave’s, and my shared office. My emotions have been on a bit of a roller coaster ever since that day: gratitude that the tree fell across Dave’s desk chair when he wasn’t there; wonder at the courage and skill of those who lifted the tree off the house with care and a giant crane; fascination and frustration with the process of demolition and restoration; and, most of all, our and our neighbors’ grief at losing dozens of trees from our woods, including a great number of very old and mighty oaks. 

Watching the clearing of dead trees and debris from the woods, in too many places down to the bare earth, has been the source of my greatest ups and downs, particularly as it has revealed to me the mixed emotional responses I am experiencing to the fact of my advancing age (I’m turning 78 in less than a week). When our “arborist” assured me that new trees would begin to show real signs of forest rejuvenation in a couple of years, I wondered if he actually knew I would be 80 by then! And when he assured me that some hickory trees behind our field would be “worth some real money in ten years,” I thought to let our kids know that those trees could be part of their inheritance!”

When bemoaning all of this to our very wise son, Randy, he surely got my attention when he reminded me what his friend, Anne Jno Baptiste, founder of the stunning Papillote Wilderness Retreat on the Caribbean island of Dominica, told him after the Category 5 Hurricane Maria struck that island on Monday, September 18, 2017, stripping nearly every leaf from the rainforest trees and leaving behind a horrific landscape of broken tree trunks and mudslides. Randy was visiting Anne and offering aid to the island when he asked her how she was feeling about the devastation. “It is spectacular!,” she said, and then went on to say how excited she was to be able to once again witness the miracle of what she refers to as “the regenerative powers of the Caribbean rainforest.” Anne was 86 years old at the time, having experienced the first devastation of her beloved gardens during Hurricane David in 1979. 

My attention was further captured when I read an excerpt from Rebecca Solnit’s new book, Orwell’s Roses, (Solnit, 2021) in which the subject George Orwell is quoted as saying that “the planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.” He went on to say that, “Even an apple tree is liable to live for about 100 years, so that the Cox I planted in 1936 may still be bearing fruit well into the 21st century. An oak or a beech may live for hundreds of years and be a pleasure to thousands or tens of thousands of people before it is finally sawn up into timber. I am not suggesting that one can discharge all one’s obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at the appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground.” 

Then, as if those attention-getters were not enough, I read just a few days ago the poem below, attributed to A. A. Al-Barakat, that my friend, Vincenza, posted on Facebook:

I am about seventy and it’s too late.

I thought of a long journey

The travel agent said

“but You’re about seventy and it’s too late.”

I left the agent, half angry half sad.

I found an old book in an old drawer.

I said great! Both of us are too old and I can read it.

A deep sound from the drawer cried:

“But you are about seventy and it is too late”

I left the book, half open half closed.

A thought sparked of an invention, something for children

But a deep sound from inside laughed:

“But your about seventy and it is too late.”

I left the thought, half clear half blurred.

I bought a cherry tree and dug a hole to plant it

My neighbor came and said “good evening dear, but you’re about seventy and it is too late”

I left the tree half clothed half naked.

I think I will go on the journey and read the book and invent the tool and plant the cherry tree.

Even if it’s dooms day.

Believe it or not,

Nothing is too late.

 When I read that nothing is too late, “even if it’s dooms day,” I thought of the book Dave recently received for his birthday from our daughter, Lisa. Begin Again (Glaude, 2020), named one of the best books of the year, is part biography, part analysis of our times, all told in the context of James Baldwins’ vast wisdom, influence and contributions regarding the history of race in America. In the book, Gaude quotes Baldwin’s remarkable admonition to begin again. Baldwin wrote:

 When the dream was slaughtered and all that love and labor seemed to have come to nothing, we scattered…We knew where we had been, what we had tried to do, who had cracked, gone mad, died, or been murdered around us.

 Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.

 In referencing Baldwin’s call to “begin again,” I surely do not mean to equate the loss of our trees to the sufferings and struggles over race in American or the other losses suffered by so many in so many places and times, but his call seems to be a universal one, a call to all who are willing to live another day, for whatever the times are calling them to do. For the moment, I’m depending on our squirrels to push the acorns scattered across our property into the ground, although I’ve gathered a few to plant in case of the “antisocial acts” I am bound to commit in the future. But Dave and I are determined, beginning next Spring, to start our own “private re-afforestation scheme.” We may never see the branches of the trees we plant swaying in the wind or protecting the wildlife of the area, but they will surely continue to produce the air we breathe, and be enjoyed by those who come behind us to love this place as much as we do. 

Every morning Dave and I remind one another, “It looks like we got another day!” If that’s not enough reason for beginning again in every moment, I don’t know what is!

Read the excerpt from Orwell’s Roses that caught my attention at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/16/every-time-you-commit-an-antisocial-act-push-an-acorn-into-the-ground-rebecca-solnit-on-orwells-lessons-from-nature?fbclid=IwAR12Eb9QITfsyXRToTTAX96G1EQSr0UrzXmALe524_Py6Sdo0uJ-jhuJjVo

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