An Autobiography by the Trees
I knew things as a child that are hidden to me now.
I knew things as a child that are hidden to me now. I knew them, but I didn’t have the intellectual skills to speak of them. I simply lived them.
One night when I was still so young that my mom needed to help me brush my teeth, I looked outside the bathroom window into the night. I saw the vastness of the stars, and an overwhelming feeling of deep presence came over me. It’s difficult to reduce what happened into words, or even a chronological set of events because as it was happening, it felt like it had already happened a long time ago.
I felt a question arise in me “what is the purpose of my life?” The answer came over me, “to pursue the truth.” Hidden within the answer was the implication of “no matter what,” and “you are relinquishing the toleration of falsehoods.” I wasn’t fully aware of the consequences of the vow I was making, and yet, did I need to be? I made the promise willingly, but it also had the feeling of being bestowed upon me. This was a covenant I couldn’t break even if I wanted to. Or if I tried to, it would rip apart the very fiber of my being. I somehow knew that.
When I was 14, I returned once again to my subconscious. I hadn’t been there since before I entered grade school. When I listened to music I loved, it felt like ecstasy. I felt things I couldn’t explain. There was a newness to life. The month before I entered high school my braces came off. I was dropped off at a remote boarding school where nobody knew me. Boys noticed me for the first time and it felt like I became an adult overnight. I was comfortable once again swimming around in the unknown. My teenage problems and insecurities were still very real, but in the countryside things were quieter. I saw the trees, and rocks, and streams as homes outside of the social world.
I instinctively took up a new (and old) practice of speaking to trees. I brought my portable speakers and my friend Sarah to the forest marking the end of the football field. Deep in the woods just outside the campus border we danced to Tori Amos and Laura Marling like pagan witches, ushering in primal worlds. And when we got so dizzy we couldn’t go on any longer, we fell to the ground and looked up at the tall trees swaying above us. They spoke, not in human language, and we listened. I don’t remember what we said back. The trees told us things that seeped into our skin, not our minds. There are only a few things you can put into words, but infinities that you can’t.
We brought our other friends back to the same spot where we shared secrets with one another that would be taboo anywhere else. It was okay there. A teacher on a run saw us. We were dancing, wearing each other’s clothes - the boys and the girls switching - pretending to be each other. Later, she emailed me concerned, assuming we must have been on drugs and that if I came clean now I wouldn’t get in trouble. How dare she be so ordinary, to think we could only be our fully strange selves if we were on drugs? It made me sick.
The spell of this world faded when it collided even more forcefully with the human one. It ruined the magic of it and brought me rushing back to the pain and ugliness of the social world. Rumors of my lesbianism, drug addiction, and impending expulsion surrounded me. It didn’t matter that none of them were true. They still had the power to take me away from the world of no explanations and make me aware of this thing called “identity.” I hated it and I hated to have to explain, deny, and plead. I hated to have to look down at my body and realize that I was a person that other people saw too. But they didn’t really see me. They saw an apparition called identity, reputation, status. Self consciousness poisoned my freedom.
I was brought back by the voice of God who came to me quite unironically during theology class. I wasn’t paying attention to the lesson, and was mindlessly staring out the window lounging on my unopened bag. A voice not my own spoke inside my head. “You will make movies.” Those were the exact words. I jolted out of my reverie and looked around, suddenly embarrassed that I wasn’t paying attention. I pulled out my notebook, slowly digesting the message. You will make movies. You will make movies. You will make movies. It was decided.
At 16, I returned to the world of origin through a dream1. I was falling through the sky thousands of feet above the earth. I knew I was about to die, but I knew God was with me, so I asked Him to tell me the secret of life. He agreed, but only because I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else. He told me there are two worlds within this one. There is the human world of society (of words, explanations, rules, shallow values) and there is the world of nature. Right before I hit the ground he demanded of me to choose one. So I chose the world of nature, and when I hit the earth it felt soft like a cloud, and I fell through deep into the ground where I rested.
A decade later, I was living in rural Maine. I met my now husband under mysterious circumstances, and we both knew more immediately than was socially acceptable that we would be together forever. We recognized each other. Our coming together was unexpected, yet familiar, as if some deeper knowing in me saw it coming. Maybe there is a part of all of us that we can’t usually access here and now that is omniscient – divorced from time. I imagine it is similar to what people talk about when they say their entire life flashed before their eyes.
During COVID, we discovered a remote forest trail that we liked to walk from time to time. It seemed to be a spot only locals knew about down a long dirt road near one of those classic century-old summer camps that Maine is known for. There was something about this forest that felt different from all of the other ones in the area, like it had been there longer even though all the trees were presumably the same age.
Near the end of the hike, which ended at a big rushing river, there was a clearing. The largest trees in the forest formed a circle around an open dirt space. A few downed trees offered seating around this opening. As far as I could tell it seemed natural, unformed by any humans. It felt like nature’s church, the tallest branches reminding me of the vaulted ceilings in a gothic cathedral.
I was drawn to this space. Whenever I entered it, it felt like I had stepped into another world, one where time stopped. I sensed an intelligence or intelligences greater than myself. Speaking loudly there felt sacrilege. On one of my trips there, I sat down on a log and quieted my mind. When I felt I could focus I asked once again, “what is the secret of life?”
I heard an answer.
It said, “everything is born of its opposite. Everything that exists can only exist because its opposite does.” I thought about this. Did this mean that beauty could only be real with the existence of ugliness? That light wouldn’t exist if there was no darkness?
This felt like a simple idea, one that a child could behold, yet when it was given to me this way it felt deeper. It was an idea I wanted to mull over for awhile.
If everything contained within it the seed of its opposite, did that mean nothing could be a mistake? Was it this tension, this polarity, that provided the energy to produce matter? Was this a scientific or spiritual truth? This concept felt important, but I was unsure if there was something deeper I needed to grasp.
I returned a few times to this clearing. I tried to pray, to ask more questions, but nothing ever came to me again. The principalities that exist there do not bend to my will, or allow me to feel as if I have any sort of transcendent powers. That’s probably a good thing.
All of these events are pins in my life, moments I can never forget, even though I expect I will spend my entire life trying to discern their meaning. Each time I think I finally understand what was told to me, the new meaning I created no longer seems sufficient. I can only suspect that I am not in control. God may have given me the answers I was seeking, but they only produced more questions.
Can I follow the mystery of the path laid out for me without grasping at literalism or egoism? Can I do what is being asked of me without fearing the unknown? I suppose I will only find out through the chronological order of living out my days one by one.
Wow, Simone. That was beautiful. The spirituality of nature is something I deeply relate to. I also resonate with your pursuit of truth as the purpose of your life. I feel that within myself as well. But unlike you, I have never heard voices of something or someone speaking to me. I love how you describe these moments as “pins” in your life, experiences you will never forget, while the search for meaning continues as an ongoing process. And the pictures you included were an extraordinary celebration of untouched nature and our existence within it: listening, learning, communing.
Beautiful and brilliant!