Dichotomies?

It’s chainsaw season again. A team day at the Reserve. I cut down three small pine trees and was glad that my “gob cuts” were straight, as I was having an issue with that last season.

Mischa and Jane both wanted to practice on large trees. I did some watching and some chatting.

It is strange to be cutting down trees when I have been writing about talking with trees for the new “Plant Perspectives” journal. I did manage to submit a piece. It is typically eccentric and incorporates most of the tree-talk that has inspired and consoled me.

No, not a vagina monologue. A series of tree dialogues.

After I submitted it, with the conclusion, essentially, that the lasting feeling I have, taking it all into account, is a profound sense of connection. With trees, I feel that I am not alone. I am one life-form among many and that we are all entangled such that harm to one just is harm to the other. And this is the tragedy of what we do as humans: we believe that we can separate ourselves off. As we do not feel “part of nature”, as we do not experience ourselves as “natural”, we wrongly believe that we can create a sustainable artificial system that can support us, while all else goes to hell in a hand basket. And yet, at the same time, I do not care about trees or robins because they somehow support me, I care about them in themselves.

This is one of those places where we have to resist dichotomies and rigid thinking. So: I believe that to harm the other earth beings harms me, but they matter in themselves. They are both me and themselves. To harm them is both to harm a part of me and to harm something that has its own value. I do not have to decide between those concepts. They both hang in the undifferentiated truth of being.

Back in the garden, I type and I can hear loud complaints from the magpies, a robin singing, the subsong of dunnocks. Mrs B appeared, a mess in the middle of her moult. Son of Bob I cannot see. Was that him singing? If so, why isn’t he here? If not, where is he? I worry about the neighbour’s cat. I worry about the territorial disputes. He was with me this morning – I nearly tripped over him.

I must go in. I must play with the cats. I must prepare for work tomorrow. I… and he is here. And all is well with the world. He is at my feet. He is on the fence. When he fluffs up his feathers, it is as though he can tuck his wings into the down. Nothing is more alert, alive, curious, daring than this little bird.

By the way, this article seemed to sum up what I felt I had learned through sitting with trees. Who needs philosophers?