Dead Trees Are Beautiful Too
I was just lounging in my zero gravity chair, staring up into the treetops, like I often do on a beautiful evening such as the one I am experiencing right now… A clear, intense light blue sky with fluffs of perfect clouds and the sun 2 and a half hours from setting. The kind of summer day that most people in the U.S. have no idea Minnesota is capable of.
75˚ and it FEELS like 75˚ - those of you who live in the humid states understand what I mean by that. There is a slight breeze and the season is such that the greens and blues of the earth and sky are so saturated with hue that it feels like it can’t be reality.
I am comfortably sitting on my deck while listening to the different species of birds have conversations… all speaking different languages but with full vocabularies sufficient to themselves to communicate in all the ways that are truly necessary.
Even the sounds of a plane in the near distance from the private air field behind my house doesn’t disrupt the birds. Their chattering amongst their kind (and probably between species if some of the intense calls are any indication) doesn’t cease when the sound of propellers whizzes overhead.
The “Stanley” that lives in the nearby marsh still honks his other-worldly yawp. That’s what I call the Sand Hill Cranes because last summer in the early weeks we had a Sand Hill Crane become a regular visitor to our bird feeder. At first we thought he was pretty cool. Kind of exotic to have one so near. We’d never had anything in our yard like that before and we’ve lived in the same house for 22 years. He would get (alarmingly) close to us if he wanted something. I named him Stanley.
We found that out one day after we had strung the bird-feeder up in-between two trees to keep him away from it. He could reach it with his beak when we had it on the shephard’s hook without much trouble - he was that tall! So when we moved it up and away from him, he walked right up to us the next time he was in our yard and stopped about 7 feet away from us and just looked at us with a cocked head.
As I was looking up into the trees, I realized something that I always do when I’m looking up there… I mentally trim the dead branches. I subconsciously prune the trees, imagining them more “perfect”.
We even have a dead one. And of course I was mentally cutting it down... clearing that space because I couldn’t see it’s own beauty. Maybe the dead one is just as amazing as the live one. It had a life too and in it’s death it is just something else. Why not just let nature do what nature does all on it’s own? I don’t HAVE to cut down and remove those dead things in our yard.
Sure, maybe there is a safety issue, but that’s still our choice to risk. The only reason I really was thinking about cutting them away was because I was conditioned to believe that manicured lawns are beautiful.
Landscaped, perfectly symmetrically planned rows of color-coordinated seasonal flowers and foliage with a graduating height surrounded by perfectly stacked little white bricks. Grass that’s perfectly the same flat height, like a buzz cut. Not a weed in sight. Not a rock out of it’s place surrounding the trimmed hedges.
But why would I think that’s more beautiful than how nature organizes and renews itself? All on its own - according to how Mother Gaia meant for it to happen.
Just because on our entire block we are the only house with more than 3 trees, and our lot looks a lot more like the middle of the woods (even though it’s quite small) than an actual yard. Does the fact that we are different than the rest of the block make us wrong?
Who says the clover that grows so abundant in my backyard is less beautiful than the buzz cut grass in my neighbor’s yard? Because the way I see it, one grows native to my area and naturally thrives without a bunch of extra watering or chemicals and actually produces adorable little flowers and leaves in a rich beautiful green… in a clover pattern!
Maybe it’s the awakening artist in me, but I’m starting to look at everything around me in a different light. With a different perspective. I see things anew.
What does the world look like when all that I see is beautiful?
No opinions or pre-judgments.
If I see every single thing in the light that I must lay all opinions I have aside. Bring it back to neutral… no pre-conceived anything… and look at it as something that the divine has created - then I believe that’s a really good start to taking it further than just allowing my yard to go wild.
I could maybe start to do it with humanity.
Truly begin to see each and every human I ever encounter as God in disguise. Without the tiniest fraction of a thought that sees difference - - - between myself and anyone else.
Uniqueness, yes. But no better, no worse. No good, no bad. Just like the dead tree vs the live ones - they just ARE.
Perfection isn’t the goal. It can’t be because it’s impossible. Either no such thing as perfection exists, or we already are perfection. Take your pick.
Just like everything, it’s a paradox.
The goal is to be a better human than you were yesterday. It’s a never ending goal. Each day we try to treat other people better than we did yesterday. We don’t shame ourselves for the growth we had to achieve to see that we could’ve done better in the past.
We only grow from it and do better because now we know better. As Maya Angelou so brilliantly and simply stated “…when you know better, do better”
I’m trying to look at everything on an even playing field. It’s easier said than done - try it for yourself. But if I am catching myself when I could be doing better then I am obviously growing, or I wouldn’t even have noticed!
When I am allowing an opinion, or I see how I have categorized the situation or person or thing, or whatever it may be… if I have chosen a side, formed a bias in any way, then I can stop right there and ask myself to view it in a neutral way.
I can remind myself that I don’t know more than a fraction of a percentage of what I need to know about any given person to be able to fully comprehend their truth. Just as no one, anywhere, has the ability to truly know me and everything about me.
Even I don’t have that privilege!
If the goal for each of us is get to that kind of true compassion and acceptance of every human being, including ourselves… even though we know we will likely never achieve it fully, but we don’t stop trying to do better every day… I think there is hope for us.
I know I’m going to do my darndest to see how close I can get to realizing that. Wanna join me?
I’m Erica and I know I don’t write perfectly but I’m not gonna worry about that anymore. I’m just gonna put out my thoughts when I get the urge and let it be raw and honest without over thinking it. Please excuse any rambling, typos, misspellings, run-on sentences, improper grammer or any other potentially offensive thing to the true authors out there. That’s me accepting that I’m either already perfect, or there is no such thing…
I'm with you Erica. I intend every day to lead with love, compassion and acceptance. I learned that it's a natural gift that we all have, and that's being uncovered from within me as every day passes. My Dharma if you will. I absolutely love trees that are no longer alive, our sulphur crested cockatoos seem to prefer them to living trees. They congregate on the branches of the gums, I've no idea why, but it's rather fun and peculiar!
That’s a deep dive, Erica, and into something I hadn’t given much thought to until I read your essay! Good thought provoking piece.