I wake at first light and rapidly scan the tree tops outside my bedroom window to see who endured the tortuous night on their feet. I passed anxious hours of darkness in my bed at Adytum, my fourth November here, bracing myself against the raging wind whipping through the ancient fir, maple and alder outside my window. I pray over and over as I wake throughout the night that God will protect Adytum and keep the aged trees, who have become our old friends, on their feet this night.
They willingly cast their lesser branches to the torrent as a sacrifice, hoping that more of themselves won’t be required in this season of fierce storms. It is akin to lightening the load of a ship to increase the sail, I think… If they must give way altogether to the icy blasts delivered in hurricane gusts; I pray that at least they will fall away from the house. The word “widow makers” has a hard reputation behind its sinister implications. This year, a traveler a little further East near the mountain found his Land Rover an unexpected tomb when an old tree made its descent to the earth. I try to sleep in trusting peace, like Jesus in the little storm tossed boat, in the midst of yet another stormy night.
Adytum, The Castello Sanctuary, is three stories of glass and turrets thrusting up into the sky, high on this hill overlooking Lake Mayfield. She is the essence of transparency with her 56 windows and a heart of vulnerability despite her strong construction. Like a lighthouse pummeled by rough seas, she stands a beacon on this hill taking the force of intense seasonal storms. Alongside the deep green of ancient fir and gnarled maples that surround her on all sides, they position together against the legendary annual storms of November. We are nearly to Thanksgiving and it’s been raining with accompanying high winds the entire month. The air is fresh and chill.
We live alongside them all, gazing into the upper canopy of these old trees from our perch in the Gothic library on the third floor. Up high, in this rarified Tower atmosphere we are one with them, their bird guests and the clouds rolling past. We are pilots without planes, viewing this spectacular landscape from the cockpit of the Tower Room with its 44 windows now blanketed with rain and debris. Startled out of our daydreams, another torpedoed branch hits the glass. We pray the windows resists breaking under perpetual assaults of limbs, some small and some quite substantial.
Such a seemingly thin membrane protects us against the elements we’d be hard pressed to survive in for even an hour. How the tiny birds continue on day after day, hunkering down against increasing winds at night is beyond me. All around me, I am witness to great power. The humble vigor of small creatures exposed to the full force of nature day by day. The sentinel firs outside the Tower wall, Castor and Pollex, named after the constellation Gemini twins are reeling like drunken sailors in their upper branches, but they don’t give an inch at their base.
Their roots cling with stubborn tenacity to unseen support far below the surface. They have learned to roll with the onslaught of terrestrial forces and to bend without breaking. They travel light, casting branches here and there that hit the roof and walls of the house with menacing thuds. Pared down to a core of beauty and might, they celebrate their antiquity and the lessons they’ve learned that leave them standing despite all attempts to send them crashing down like great, fallen wrecks.
These grand trees are our comrades and our friends. Their reassuring presences enrich and encourage our own lives more than we’d ever have imagined prior to coming here to live our lives out alongside them. We need them. We grieve their loss when they go down. The skyline is forever altered by their passing. The remains left on the forest floor is no small matter to contend with. The scars left on their comrades who lived in the path of their falling bulk, their own limbs lost to the slicing power of the descent, will take years to heal.
A ghost maple older than the oldest man I know hasn’t fared as well this season. The tree died years ago and was left as home to woodpeckers and countless squirrels. From the safety of the house, I am now confronted through pouring rain with its massive roots, taller than a house, instead of the considerable girth of its trunk that was vertical just a few hours ago. Sometime in the night, it fell while I slept on.
Some fall with a canon shot, bursting in mid air before the thunderous crash to earth. Others simply tip over and are laid relatively quietly to rest in the still of the night. This maple’s root system is so massive that it gives pause. We just stare out the window, stunned, and longing for the storm to let up enough to walk out to see it close up. Later, when we do, we see long root fingers wrapped around boulders providing invisible support that allows them such incredible longevity. They are rooted and grounded upon rock seeking a firm foothold and foundation to live life upon.
Living here yields a constant Voice if we have ears to hear. Nature instructs us in her own language about how to live long and victoriously on this earth. We “hear” that a life founded on anything less than solid rock will not stand for long. We must have a firm foundation from which to thrust ourselves upward into the world. Grasping firm truths, holding to strong principles and enmeshing ourselves in the great Identity of the Creator will enable us to soar high without losing our heads or toppling over at the first challenging season possibly taking others with us.
These old friends show us that they are realists, willing to accept things as they are and adjust to changing times without giving up their foundation. They are pliable and bend with amazing flexibility to the brute forces that seek to take them down. They don’t give up at the first sign of turbulence or change. They are fighters and tough, resilient survivors. From amazingly small beginnings, they have gone from strength to strength and endured.
Along their own journey, our companions and friends of the soil have learned to let go of dead wood and excess weight. They succumb to the pruning of nature, which seems severe to us at times as we survey their sharply hewed forms. But they are left with pure, tensile resiliency unencumbered by lifeless weight. Their purpose is clarified.
Holding on too long, being unwilling to release the past, living on in our former glory will never allow us to achieve the deep groundedness and settled calm in the face of adversity we need to be survivors. Being humbly willing to be stripped and laid bare for a season is the deep wisdom of the forest and the lesson for us to emulate and embrace. What is left is pure essence combined with increased intensity and intent; a life lived with intension and pointed direction.
At some point in the November torrents, I sense their rejoicing at the gains of strength of the years. Once they were young and small raised under the shelter of a parent tree. The heat of a parched summer could take their lives in an instant. But they learned to entwine their tender roots with the successful companions around them joining with them in a community of power and trust, safety and growth.
It’s those that stand alone that are so prone to falling. Displaying strength and encouraging others to do the same is how Castor and Pollex have lived to their great ages. The roots of lesser Fir join them under the surface forming a strong and communal defensive line. We need one another and we need grounding in the Great Source. This is one message of their silent Voice to those that have ears to hear.
We need also to dance, to play and rejoice. Like young warriors testing strength and skill upon the battlefield, these Ancients know they are faithful and true. They are assured of their value to the world and all they give to all of nature. Most days, we see them dancing and dipping in the thermals engaging passing hawks and eagles in the dance; teasing them to light on their moving targets.
Like King David noted, they do “clap their hands” and sing Halleluiah! They worship, they praise and they joy. That much is clear to us who live in their community. They take their pleasure while they may, soaking up the sunshine and building up solid resources for days ahead. They live in the moment and truly, no one moment seems better than the others; only different in the good that will emerge from it.
Our friends of the wood are “home” to so many. When one falls, or several as this season’s stormy yield has revealed, there are many left without a hole or perch to call their home. We met a little owl once who had been injured when he fell from his own falling tree house. Today, there are unusually large flocks of nuthatches and juncos casting about in the wind. I brave the elements to give them some extra food while they make their own plans about where to set up housekeeping next in the face of their loss.
A squirrel talks incessantly to me, not stopping when she’s fed as she usually does. It reminds me when we had to board our old cat at the vet’s for 11 days when we took a trip. He’d never been boarded before. They caged him the entire time and it nearly killed him. He talked the same incessant way when we finally got him home, releasing all his fear and trauma at what he perceived as his abandonment and ultimate demise. This squirrel has lost her home, perhaps her nut store and her family this past night. She has chosen to share this with me I assume, by her uncharacteristic behavior.
It is a reminder to me that many, in this season of tremendous unemployment and foreclosures are in need of a place to settle in. We should always be willing to open our doors and provide hospitality to those passing through our lives when we are called to do so. Like the great trees of the forests, we spread our welcome and are willing to give of ourselves sharing what and who we are freely. This is the way of nature.
The great fallen in our wood family this morning are finding grace in the act of falling. They have begun a new evolution emerging as a nurse tree and will become home to countless varied species from their place on the horizon. Their death and decay will prove a heritage and a gift not only by their memory of proud greatness, but by what they leave behind.
Their giving continues for years to come after their heads cease to soar into the clouds. Some might say their courageous life pales in comparison to the work they do in death. Their spirit goes on and many are fed at their feet for years and years to come. The young seedling that is nurtured from its decaying bark can only hope to attain to the greatness it tastes.
What will we leave behind that those we have never met will be nurtured by? How can we leave a bequest that will help our heirs learn the deep truths taught by God through nature? How will they be fed by our life, in death? Investments made during life must carry forward in death. That is the lesson of nature.
I think of John Muir. He understood the Temple of Nature and the constant instruction that was offered to those who had ears to hear and eyes to see. Every day at Adytum is holy and full of growth for those who see deeply, to those that take time to ponder the lessons being offered. The music of the spheres plays continually here. Tree choirs join in creating string symphonies with the wind. All is one and for one purpose - that God, the creative Source, is honored and glorified in His creation. We live as novices in a huge community of teachers here at Adytum, Donn and I, humbled and inspired by the profound wisdom being taught on and through this sacred land.
Ephesians 6:13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
