Standing around us we see all the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who each have their own instructions and uses. Some provide shelter and shade, others fruit and beauty and many useful gifts. The Maple is the leader of the trees, to recognize its gift of sugar when the People need it most. Many peoples of the world recognize a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind we greet and thank the Tree life. Now our minds are one. - the Onondaga “Words That Come Before All Else”[i]
For over forty years, the maple in our front yard has given us gifts of shelter and shade in the summer, and of great beauty in its gold and bronze fall leaves and winter bare branches. This year, however, was the first we tapped its gift of sugar, and it was generous. It felt a little wrong to rob the tree of a bit of its lifeblood, but the friend who gave us some of her extra taps reminded me that the indigenous people of this land having been tapping the trees here for millennia. Knowing the wisdom of the honorable harvest – not taking the first or last or more than we need – the trees continue to thrive. As Ronnie Chilton of the White Earth Land Recovery Project said, “You can cut a tree [down] once and get some money, but if you make syrup every year, . . . you will get food, a sweet taste, you will smell Spring, and you will get food for your soul” (LaDuke, 132).
As the days warm, the sap begins the magical process of flowing up the trunk of the tree. We waited with anticipation as the plastic bags hung on the taps filled each day with sap – gallons and gallons from just five taps. It takes all those gallons to make a small portion of syrup. Robin Wall Kimmerer recounts the Anishanaabe tale of Nanabozho, who in his walk through the world, was dismayed to discover people taking the gifts of the Creator for granted -- lying beneath maple trees with their mouths open to catch the sweet syrup, without ceremony or care. In response, Nanabozho poured water into the trees to dilute the syrup, so that now the sap flows like water with only a trace of sweetness, “to remind the people both of possibility and responsibility. And so it is that it takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup” (63). And so it does. When the day came, we boiled all day and well into the night, but in the end we were richly rewarded with two and a half quarts of syrup, enough to last us all year and to share.
Two of the maples we tapped are tree huggers. Begun as two trees standing beside each other, they eventually embraced, grew together and became one, and several years later branched out into their individual growth once again. Ignoring Kahlil Gibran’s thoughts on marriage --
…let there be spaces in your togetherness, . . .
Stand together yet not too near together. . .
For the . . .oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow (15-16)
-- the maples have found a way to grow together and apart, in each other’s shade and sun, thriving. We have much to learn from them, as Susan Griffin describes so well:
The way we stand, you can see we have grown up this way together, out of the same soil, with the same rains, leaning in the same way toward the sun. See how we lean together in the same direction. How the dead limbs of one of us rest in the branches of another. How those branches have grown around the limbs. How the two are inseparable. . . . the way we stand, each alone, yet none of us separable . . . (220-221).
I’ve encountered so many tree huggers in the forest, and each time am thrilled and delighted by the ways in which they embrace and swirl, entangling their lives with each other’s in a dance of life and limb. They know how to lean on each other, supporting each other through the worst of the winds, and sharing the sunshine. They seem to draw strength and sustenance from each other, and as we know from Suzanne Simard’s work, indeed they do, nourishing each other, their roots undoubtedly entangled even more than their trunks and branches – an extended family of trees entwined in the soil underneath.[ii]
Tree huggers. It’s become a derogatory label flung at environmentalists by those who find our actions to preserve the earth to be frivolous at best, destructive to the extractive economy at worst. Yet it’s a term I proudly embrace, just as the trees embrace each other. It has a venerable heritage. Its roots go back nearly three hundred years to 1730 when Amrita Devi led a movement of the Bishnoi community in Rajasthan, India, to save their sacred khejiri trees by encircling and embracing them. Soldiers, whom the maharaja had ordered to cut the trees for wood to build his palace, simply cut through the bodies of those trying to protect the trees. In all, soldiers killed 363 people that day. When the maharaja learned of what had happened, he ordered that none of the trees near the village ever be cut. The trees, as well as a plaque in honor of the Chipko (meaning “to hug” in Hindi) women and men, stand there to this very day.
The Chipko women
Their efforts inspired the contemporary Chipko movement, begun in the 1970s as women of a Himalayan region of India also embraced trees, risking their lives to protect the trees from being cut for commercial gain. As ecofeminist Vandana Shiva said of the Chipko women, the actions of “ordinary women . . . have provided local leadership through extraordinary strength. It is the invisible strength of women like them that is the source of the staying power of Chipko – a movement whose activities in its two decades of evolution have been extended from embracing trees to embracing living mountains and living waters” (Shiva and Mies, 246-247). The Chipko movement spread throughout India and has inspired tree huggers around the world – from those who have sat in the redwoods to those like Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Matthai, who founded the Green Belt movement in Kenya, in which thousands of women planted millions of trees.
Hartwick Pines
My mother early on taught us the sacredness of trees, undoubtedly inspiring my tree hugging. The large white pine next to our house was a great climbing tree, the branches perfectly spaced to enable us to climb high into the treetop. My brother and I spent many happy hours climbing it. We’d come in covered in sap, much to my mother’s dismay. Her concern was not so much about the intractability of the sap, or even the fact that her young children had been climbing so high, but rather about the fact that we’d been climbing the white pine again -- a tree she held with great reverence – a delicate tree that may have been injured by our climb. She would often tell us of how, after a day of canoeing the Au Sable, she and her campers would bed down for the night in Michigan’s Hartwick Pines, reveling in the sweet smell of the pines and the soft pine needle beds.
Of all the trees in our yard, my favorite was the dogwood. My parents had moved it from their old house to their new one, for they, too, cherished it, and placed it directly in front of the large picture window in our living room. It was striking in its beauty, its symmetry, its delicate four-petaled flower so distinct from the blossoms on all the other flowering trees. It is dogwoods I’ve missed the most since moving north where it is too cold for them to grow, but I get glimpses of them in the bunchberry that blooms here in springtime, low to the ground where they are warmed by the heat radiating from the earth.
My mother also instilled in me a love of the north woods – the towering beech with its smooth grey bark; the hemlock gracing the forest, its elegant branches extending protection to the creatures living within and below; the arborvitae – “tree of life” she would always say – with its sacred healing; the paper birch – its white branches striking against the deep blue skies.
I’ve come to name the birches that fill the woods behind my home -- the “Mother Tree,” bowed in the shape of a pregnant woman’s belly, that also forms a lap where I can sit and rest; “Wild By Nature,” a clump that began as three, then became four, just as my music group by that name had; the “Tree of Life,” a massive clump birch that was a tree of hope for me in the years I doubted my survival.
I’ve been privileged to have lived a life surrounded by trees, but others are not so fortunate. Millions, mostly poor and people of color, live in urban heat islands where no trees grow. These heat islands exist primarily in areas redlined in the 1930s, a practice which prevented people of color from getting loans in more desirable neighborhoods of tree-lined streets, resulting in their concentration in the often-treeless neighborhoods considered less desirable. Housing disparities have resulted in health disparities, as those living in these islands suffer poorer health outcomes. In addition to heatstroke itself, extreme heat compromises cardiovascular, kidney, and respiratory disease, and creates higher levels of ground-level ozone pollution, lowering air quality. What’s more, those living in treeless neighborhoods are denied the simple pleasures and therapeutic and restorative benefits of living among trees.
Several years ago, a massive windstorm toppled nearly a third of the trees in the woods behind our home, and I have mourned the devastation to the forest. Nevertheless, recently we had a tall red pine next to our house taken down, fearing the damage it might cause if it fell in another windstorm. I couldn’t watch as the limbs were chopped, the trunk topped, and the tree ground into woodchips -- and have grieved its loss. This spring I’ll plant fruit trees where the pine had stood, cherries and plums that will brighten the spring with blossoms that will mature into brilliant red fruit, gifts of sustenance both for us and the birds. I’ve planted many trees since moving to my home – spruces, pines, junipers, apples, and a maple or two. I can hardly think of a more satisfying activity than planting trees -- a bequest to the earth of replenishing humus, to the air of carbon dioxide, to the birds, squirrels, deer, and other forest creatures of food and shelter.
In the Onondaga “Words That Come Before All Else,” the first expression of gratitude is given to the Earth, “for she gives us everything that we need for life” (Kimmerer, 108). In honoring the Anishnaabe code of reciprocity, for which I have deep respect, being a tree hugger — doing everything in our power to protect, nourish, and restore the earth — is the least we can do in return for all the earth does for us.[iii]
In summer, maple leaves make more sugar than they can use immediately, so the sap begins flowing down the trunk, back to the roots. The sugar is stored, as Kimmerer notes, “in the original ‘root cellar,’” and then rises again the following spring. She continues, “The syrup we pour over pancakes on a winter morning is summer sunshine flowing in golden streams” (69). In reciprocity for this gift, Kimmerer planted daffodils around the base of her maple trees. I love this idea. I’ve planted hundreds of daffodils in my garden and hillside, but next fall, in a small gesture of reciprocity, I will plant daffodils around the base of the maples, in reciprocity and gratitude for their gift of summer sunshine in a jar.
Notes
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
Historically redlined neighborhoods are warmer than others in the Twin Cities (sahanjournal.com)
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.
LaDuke, Winona. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life. Cambridge: South End Press, 1999.
Maathai, Wangari. Unbowed: A Memoir. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.
Mies, Maria & Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. Halifax, Nova Scotia. Fernwood Publications and London: Zed Books, 1993.
Minneapolis Urban Tree Canopy (UTC) (arcgis.com)
Race and Housing Series: Urban Heat Islands (tchabitat.org)
Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books, 1989.
Urban Heat Islands and Equity – GreenLaw (pace.edu)
[i] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.
[i] Simard, Suzanne. Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. New York: Knopf, 2021.
[i] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013.
[ii] Simard, Suzanne. Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. New York: Knopf, 2021.
[iii] For those in the Duluth area wanting to contribute to efforts to protect and restore Duluth’s trees, you can join the Duluth Parks and Rec ReLeafing Project. reLEAF Duluth (duluthmn.gov)