In a fractured world, I turn to trees

As the world teeters on fragility and grows more fragmented with each passing day, I find myself increasingly seeking solace in nature, in trees in particular.

I’ve always had a weakness for trees — large, widespread branches seemingly touching the clouds high up in the sky. Reaching up, up up — as my yoga instructor says, “lengthening the spine” — sometimes even further than my eye can follow. Fat, gnarled, brown tree trunks that are bumpy, scarred, and uneven, but seem to whisper of stability, groundedness, and solidness. A reassuring, “I’ve got you vibe” seems to emanate from these mighty blocks of wood.

And leaves! Multiple hues of green that seem to fly freely in the breeze, with a lightness of being, while being safely anchored to branches. With that safety comes the ability to give. They’re kind and flexible, and they always, always dance this way and that to allow the rays of the sun to find a way through them and down to us. They let the light in, even on our darkest days.

I fleetingly remember my school inviting Dr Elaine Charles to speak to us as we were preparing for our Grade 10 board exams. I remember one of her tips was to break the long bouts of study, of staring at words in paper textbooks, by looking at the green leaves of trees or plants for three to five minutes. “The colour green,” she’d said, “relaxes the brain and the eyes.” This was before the complete hijacking of all our senses by technology; this was in the pre-mobile, pre-digital era. A simpler time, a time when Google was a word we hadn’t even come across. And yet, even then, trees had this power to calm us. To lower stress levels and reduce cortisol. Just by looking at them.

A few years ago, I’d taken a course in MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction). One of the exercises we had to do was to go on a mindfulness walk. We had to slowly walk in a garden and stop to observe the texture of the bark of a tree, the varying shades of green on a leaf, shadows dancing lightly across it, a dried flower hanging by a thread, moving in the gentle breeze, waiting, but not yet released to the ground. All incredibly calming and soothing for the soul. I remember savouring how that walk slowed me down and insistently pulled my attention to the present moment. 

I feel bits and pieces of me, through so many stages of my life, are interwoven with trees. So, at this time of mental fatigue, and news of war and destruction, and images of missiles and bomb blasts, and politicians updating their social media handles with no care for tone or word choice, maybe it isn’t such a surprise after all that I find myself fervently reaching out to nature, and to trees in particular, to gently hold space for me and allow me to rest, restore and recover. Not so much to make sense of the world again, I’m not sure that’s even a possibility anymore, but to heal.

Perhaps that is the quiet wisdom that trees offer us. They do not rush to fix the chaos of the world, nor do they shout above it. They simply stand — rooted, patient, steady, rock solid. Maybe I’m hoping that I will always remember the lessons I learnt from trees. To pause. To stand tall. To breathe. To stay grounded even when the winds around me grow wild. To trust that, like these trees, I too can hold my ground, reach for the light, and endure.