Treefall

the impact of a falling tree/the choices in a life

I’ve been thinking a lot about the origin of evil. Desire, I thought, all evil comes from desire. It is when you want so desperately that nothing else matters, that evil arises. I am evil when I cannot hear the deeper pattern of things. When I cannot listen because my ears have been covered with desire’s thrumming heartbeat, drum beat, a hummingbird aching for nectar it cannot reach. That is the origin of evil.

But there is something beneath that. Desire isn’t evil in and of itself. What of the desires that align with the way of the world? What of the desires that stand so right in my mind I cannot countermand them? I desire to be loving, kind, gentle - besides, setting desire as akin to evil smacks of Buddhism, and we cannot have that.

At its core, then, evil does not arise from desire, but deafness. It is in those moments - for whatever cause - that I cannot hear the will of the world,that I cannot align with it. In those moments I run counter to the pattern of things, away from the weaver’s will, and towards harming those around me.

Some harm is necessary, and some pointless. Some hurt is good and other is evil. To live a good life is to know when we need to hurt and when we can step aside, and to listen - stop talking for long enough to listen - to where that line is being drawn.

Silence is sacred to me, for in silence I can obey.

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I’m late to Sunday Sauna because my Pear Pie baked more slowly than I was expecting, and I started late. Ovens and I are not always in accord about how long things should take, and our propane-powered one, with a crack in the door and no temperature gauge to speak of, has squabbled with me often. I spend the time talking with Papa and arrive right on time for food. A pie is not a bad thing to bring late.

I first came to Sunday Sauna, a weekly potluck and Sauna put on by a neighbor, Randell, when I was three and a half. Since moving back from college, I’ve gone twice - and there’s a rightness to it. These people are grounded folk - mechanics, fishermen, surveyors, survivalists. They have salt in their beards, and their conversations follow a rhythm that is as old as the earth. I remember it, love it, long to it.

Since I left, Randell’s son had returned and brought a whole new crowd to the potluck. A little less than half of the faces are my age - perhaps a little older, in that indefinite range between late teens and early thirties where a few years of difference matters but has to be asked for.

I come in more comfortably now, put my pie on the table, dish up a variety of beef and beans, and sit to watch and listen. They’re talking about Pier politics, the boat yard’s need for money, the deteriorating stormbreak. On my other side a young man is trying to describe Bitcoin to an older one. I focus in on that and learn a lot more than I knew before.

By unspoken agreement the old regulars sauna early and the young people sauna after dinner. I’d Sauna’d early last time in an effort to catch up with people I’ve known since I was little. Today I’m late though, and I go out with the youngers. I’m quiet, observant, listening. There’s an old couple, man and woman, who quiet as we come in. Two young men, and a young woman who banter familiarly. I judiciously avoid looking at the younger woman for fear of offending, attempting to act casual. Has female nudity really become that unusual in my life?

There is a rhythm to the sauna. People get too hot, and go out and shower and talk outside, then return. The older couple soon departs, and everybody else ends up outside. The younger woman, Jackilan, starts talking about psychedelics and how if she could only get people in polarities together sharing some mind altering experience, she could heal the whole world’s strife. “People are so much more than their labels,” she says. It’s around then that the other two men go back in, but we linger.

“What are your labels?” I ask.

She takes it as the question I always ask - Who are you? - pauses, considers.

“I’m an environmentalist, a feminist, educated - or, maybe an academic?” She pauses and I let the silence linger. “I don’t define myself by either religion or lack of it. I’m a chef - or let’s say a cook - chef sounds too official. What about you? I’m talking a lot.”

“I’ll go in a moment - but the obvious follow up question is where do you slip through those labels? How don’t they work for you?”

“Oh! Good question,” she exclaims. “I don’t know! - can I have a week to think about it?”

I smile, good answer, “of course.” I pause and slide into my own definition - thrilled to play off her. “I’m also an environmentalist, a feminist - educated, though definitely not academic. I’m very religious and quite adamantly so. I define myself by my Celtic Paganism,” I add, as I see her assuming that religious means Christian. She laughs.

“I’m also a cook,” I continue. “I’m liberal.”
“Oh, I forgot political axes,” she notes.
“Probably a hippy.”
“All my friends are,” she confides.
“Although that’s definitely one where I don’t fit all the stereotypes.”
“Oh I’m scientifically inclined,” she blurts out as she thinks of it.

The others come out at this point, and Jackilan goes in.I linger, waiting for them to shower, asking an occasional question. They begin to get dressed and I go back in, where Jackilan has laid herself out across the lower bench. I take the higher, and she adds some more that she’s thought of. We talk about social class, her desire to work less and play more - balance her life. She tells me how she’s building herself a house right now - trying first to live in equilibrium with the environment, and then move out from there.

“Me too, me too!” I keep exclaiming but she doesn’t seem to hear. She leaves, showers, and heads back inside. I’m left noticing that the nakedness doesn’t describe my attraction - I stopped consciously trying not to look, and with that comfort, stopped sexualizing her either. I find myself attracted to her, but attracted by the thrill of learning someone new.

I’m struck by my similarity to her. Find the right circles and everyone will share the things that are important to me. It is the answer to an earlier conversation. I had been feeling trapped in my relationship because no one else could ever share so much with me - I could never find a replacement.

No, says the conversation, you have a choice. Ask and you will be given - though always with a twist. I laugh, and feel the force of it float off me. With freedom it stops feeling like a burden. I pause, choose my girlfriend one more time, and marvel at the way that questions get answered.

________________________________________________________________

When I brought Eithne out to look at my building site, she latched onto the tree in the center of it.

I’m building myself a home. First I must create for myself something that is in equilibrium with the wilds around me, learn to foster the wilds, shaping them as a beaver shapes the river with its dam. I am building myself a home and trying as hard as I can to listen, rather than desire.

So it’s awkward when Eithne tells me I’m not listening. That this tree is so beautiful she cannot bear to see it cut. She seems to believes that listening means agreeing, and as I agree again and again that it is beautiful, but not that it needs to live on its present state, she grows more and more frustrated with me.

This house will hold a dozen crazy ideas about the way I want to live. It’s built four feet off the ground with my chicken coop beneath. Five walled structure with a sliding glass door on four sides. I’ll sleep in a loft, I’ll cook on a rocket stove, it’ll all be built of cob, and in the center of it all, I want a maple tree to coppice inside my house.

When Eithne latches onto that maple and insists I can build my roof around it, it feels like a raw grab for power. I’m not building this house for her. I don’t want to live with her, preferring space to heal before coming back into her storm. She’s been attacking every aspect of this project - clearing the land - using glass - my building skills - thermal mass - the need to build at all - and then when I remain stubborn, she’s struck. I feel like she’s chosen the central concept of this project and clung to it. Environmentalist that she is, lover of nature, she cannot see this tree fall.

Where I believe that evil comes from not listening, Eithne believes that it originates from unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion. Where I seek to listen, she seeks to speak, and each constellating the other we go round and around, each of us trying to be good, each of us trying to make sure the other is listening or speaking, speaking or listening. Sick of being told to express what I know that I feel, I insist we set the issue aside and I’ll bring it up again when I am ready.

Weeks go by, and we keep circling back to the tree. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s none of her business. It’s not her land, it’s not her house, and I do not belong to her. Worse of all she can’t see beyond the destruction and to the creation it holds. She does not know the quiet with which I approached this place. The instruction from the land - build like a beaver making its dam.

Then five chickens die. Eithne finds them sprawled across the coop, necks bitten and sucked dry. We process their bodies together. She teaches me how to pluck a chicken, and I show her what I know of gutting. We laugh together when Chicken Little squawks one last time, like a rubber chicken, squeezing and making a sound. We pass together from the shock to the pain to the soft sorrow of attending to their remains.

I grumble about her, but when we come into crisis she is there behind me, listening. Her power is mine as we walk through fire and water together. We are partnered - patience and push impressing our mark on the world.

She feels this partnership too, perhaps. We go out to eat for the first time ever - an anomaly, since I’m a cook and think my food better than anything I could buy out. Near the end of our conversation at dinner, she gives me a gift. “When we were processing those chickens I saw the care you brought to it. The honoring of the dead. You’ll honor that tree, and while I’m not happy about it - I give you my blessing.”

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I have a list on my phone. Actually I have a lot of lists, I live by lists, but this one is made of things I am supposed to do. As I finish them, they vanish, but the hard tasks float to the top, staring at me every time I log a new task in.

“Call Richard, call back slam poetry guy, call tree guy . . . “ I hate phone calls.

On Wednesday though, I pause in digging my foundation - physically tired but mentally energized, and look at the maple tree. Since the blessing I’ve been waiting, a little from the discomfort of calling someone I don’t know, a little to wait until the right moment.

Richard is the easiest, so I start with him. He picks up and recognizes my voice after over half a year. We arrange for me to come over to his saw mill this upcoming Saturday to buy lumber from him. When I hang up I’m ready to clear that list out. I call back the man who so loved my voicemail that he wanted to include it in an online slam poetry collection. No answer. I express that even though it’s been a month since he called . . . I’d be honored.

Lastly I call the man Randell recommended to cut down my tree to the odd height of ten feet.
“Is this Able?”
“This is he.”
“Hi, I have a tree to cut down at ten feet up.”
“I can do that. Where are you at?”
“I’m up by Randell’s place.”
“Oh, I happen to be up that way tomorrow. Would that work for you?”

I’d planned to go into town in the morning, but I don’t have anything to do until evening. “Sure,” I say. I text him my address and marvel at how fast things move when I actually get around to doing them.

Papa is off to his weekly doctor’s appointment at noon, so I bank on that, covering my tracks by asking a friend to come pick me up for tabletop roleplaying that night. Just as I’m harvesting breakfast in the morning I get the call that he’s on his way.

I go quickly prepare blackberry jam on bread for my breakfast instead of the stinging nettle scramble I’d planned. I’m eating it when he pulls in, a large pickup truck with a large man. He shakes my hand and I show him what I want.

I’m going to have to learn how to use a chainsaw - it’s just part of modern backwoods life. I often wonder how people did firewood before chainsaws. I wield a fearsome axe, but the idea of hacking rounds with an axe sounds exhausting, the idea of doing it with a hand saw no less so. Until I can collect all my wood each day from the branches fallen to the forest floor, I’ll have to use a gasoline powered blade.

I didn’t think my first experience should be ten feet up in a ladder though.

Able ties a line to an upper branch, catching it in the first expert toss of his grappling hook. Then he secures it to another tree at an angle to the way he wants it to fall. Strapping on his utility belt with dangling chainsaw, he climbs up the tree with spikes on the side of his shoes.

“Right here?” It’s a little higher than I was thinking, but I nod anyway. He fires up his chainsaw and begins cutting, then leaving it running he taps in a wedge, then cuts a few more strategic spots. Finally he turns off the saw and comes down. The tree is still standing.

I’m going to ask, when he goes over to his rope, and pulls. The tree topples in a rumbling boom. I see the bottom slide off, hit the earth in a spray of soil and bounce up. There’s a crackle of limbs as it hits. Then it trails into a low groan.

It happens so fast. He collects his grappling hook from the limb, and takes off his utility belt.
“Is a check good?” I find myself asking. I’d been planning to ask him to take down another tree, an alder, but now, now one is enough.

He takes my check. We chat more about my plans for the house. Everyone is interested in someone doing something a little different. When he leaves I walk over to the tree.

It’s dead. Leafless, branchless, it stands without a trace of life. I stand there noticing the change in light and shift of perspective. My building site has turned into a clearing rather than a forest glade. I notice everything crushed under that big fallen tree.

I go grab my ladder and lean it against the remaining ten feet. It’s just tall enough I can barely clamber on top, and it’s with effort that I precariously perch, feet dangling. Then I just sit. I try at one point to count the tree’s rings but I can’t make them out. Mostly I’m quiet and still. I breath. My stomach is shaking.

I wanted this. I paid for this. I’m struck by that tree hitting the dirt, playing over and over in my mind as if in slow motion. I’m struck by the impact of it. Struck by the fact that of everything I have ever done in my life, having this tree cut down might have had the biggest impact.

How long would it have lived? How big would it have grown? How many animals and plants would it have sustained before finally being overshadowed by burgeoning Hemlock and Fir? What have I done?

________________________________________________________________

I am late to the Sunday Inipi ceremony because my Rhubarb pie, while baked in time, drew me into a conversation about Rhubarb and sweeteners that I only managed to disengage from ten minutes after I should have left. Luckily the ceremony is held by the little Swiss family down the lane. I arrive ten minutes late, and others are still arriving. There is a sense of timelessness to these things.

After I’ve set my pie in the mudroom, and surreptitiously plugged my phone into the wall socket there - they’re on solar, but they have more electricity than me - I go down to the fire and immediately go stand by it. I wrap my invisibility cloak up around myself and watch people as they mingle and talk about the things a village says to one another, as we wait for the sweatlodge to begin.

By chance Light comes and stands next to her sister. As they talk I learn that the man nearby is the sister’s fiance and he joins the conversation after a while. I stay quiet and watch as Light,who is very shy - perhaps moreso than I am- opens up with people close to her. Laughing, demanding - they talk mostly about the upcoming wedding, but I can’t help but watch Light’s face. I’ve had a crush on her since we first met over a year ago now. She’s the kind of woman created to tempt me. Dark curly hair around an elfish face, soft brown eyes framed in glasses. Sensitive, artistic, and in need of encouragement. I’m sure she has a temper, though I’ve yet to see it.

Whenever she looks my direction I am obviously looking elsewhere.

We go into the sweat lodge and by coincidence I find myself across from her. As long as the door is open I’m hidden in the second row of men, as she sits in the first row of women closest to the hot rocks as they bring them in. Light is close to the family - though I’ve yet to figure out the connection - and she sings all the songs. I watch her lips as we welcome the sacred pipe and call in our ancestors in indecipherable Lakota. When the lodge gets dark I follow her voice high against the rest. After the first round when light streams in and I see her drenched in sweat, skin shiny and flushed with the heat, I remember that it’s spring.

The second round is especially hot and drives everything from my mind. When we crawl out at the end I’m almost catatonic, but the cold brings me back. I go out into the woods to pee, and find a plant I don’t recognize nestled behind the horse barn. I pick one, taste a leaf - it’s a little spicy - and carry it with me back to the fire.

Light comes and stands next to me. I am not, unless I miss my guess, the only one of the two of us with a mild crush.
“Do you know what this plant is?” I ask.
She squints at it. “No - which is weird - I know most of the plants here.”
“I figured you might,” I say - hoping that doesn’t indicate the amount of time I’ve spent looking at her blog. “I’ll have to ask Peema.”
We stand there for maybe a minute longer, in what I assume is a natural silence - the kind inspired by a fire. When I move to go off, she surprises me with “Yeah, I don’t know what it is. Maybe if I saw the whole plant?”
“It’s just right over here. Do you want to see?” She assents, and conscious of her safety I take a path that keeps her in line of sight of people as we head out into the woods alone. The plant looks just as it did in my hand on the ground, and she still doesn’t know it. I taste a leaf again - to her dismay - and we talk about the signs plants give of their poisonousness. Foxglove and how it has showed up in both of our lives. We end up taking down the sweatlodge together, pulling wet blankets off the frame and hanging them.

“How’s life treating you, Light?” I ask at some point.
“Okay - stressful.”

“What’s the stressful?” I press.
“Well, it’s pretty much over. I’m trying to quit art, but a friend talked me into doing a mural and then she didn’t show up, so I did it all today.”

“You’re trying to quit art? - You say that like you’re trying to give up cocaine.”
She laughs, “Basically. I have a list in my car of reasons I can’t take on more art projects. So I have time in my garden, so I have time to relax, so I have time to spend with my family and friends . . . “
“So you have time.”
“Yeah.”

A friend comes, joins in, and diffuses the conversation. We’re quiet after that. I go check the plant by Peema who also doesn’t know it. She crinkles a leaf up in her hand to smell rather than taste. I grab my pie, and bring it down, then after serving up I sit by the fire and listen again. There’s a physics teacher who’s talking with Light’s sister about math and I love listening in on him. Peema’s partner Paul comes and sits down next to me, asks about my father and listens when I talk. I’m not in a talking mood, but I find I like him for it.

At some point later I tap into a conversation he’s having with Light. I can’t hear her voice, just his resonant one, but she’s mostly nodding and ‘Mming’ with what he says. I eventually gather that they’re talking about her relationship, who may or may not have been the man who squatted to hug her an affectionate goodbye just before. He mirrors back what he’s hearing - that she wants more commitment. She wants to settle down and she “doesn’t want to just be dating” - she wants more.

Paul advises honesty. Give him the opportunity to hear your needs spoken clearly, and then give him the time and space to figure out if he’s ready for that. Approach your relationship without fear of its destruction. If you are ready to come together then it will be right for both of you. If not it serves you both to let it go.

Something sings in me that I could be that committed man. I’m settling down. I’m exactly what she’s asking for! Then another part reminds me that I always sing this song whenever a woman complains - and it’s not always true. Eithne asks for more time spent together and I don’t always give it. She asks for more commitment than meets my needs. I smile sadly to myself and shake my head at spring, and choose my girlfriend one more time.

________________________________________________________________

I bike over to Richard’s house like I used to do. As before, I park at the bottom of Mariah’s land and make my way up the steep hill on foot. As before, I sneak past the yurts but she still spots me and waves a cheery hello. As before, Gypsy barks at me when she smells me coming, a big white sheep dog that circles me from afar.

Richard comes out when he hears the dogs. “Hello my man! How have you been doing?”
“Good!” I lie. “Glad to see you’re still up and kicking!”
“Yeah . . . it was a near thing,” he says. He’s recovering from heart surgery. I don’t press for specifics.

I explain what I’m looking for and he launches in. Richard knows wood like nobody I’ve ever met before. He talks about the virtues of fir for flooring, and talks me into using close struts and one inch boards for the inside. He shows me the inconsistencies on each piece of wood “You’ll want to cut this one near the knot if you can,” or “this has a lot of chaff on the end I’ll give it to you as an eight footer.”

Richard is partially deaf, and he makes up for it with a constant string of stories, advice, and quaint old phrases. It’s hard to let him know that I don’t need any four by fours, as he walks me through what I should use for what. Two by six supports, nothing smaller - two by fours for the framing. Having lived here his whole life, he points to the house and advises me to float what I’m building on as much concrete as I can.

“Buildings here in the Pacific Northwest are basically boats. The more foundation you give the less likely it is to sink.”

We finally settle on what I’ll take and he’s more generous than he has a right to be. He gives me a discount because I worked for him, throws in some weathered lumber for free, and counts every crack and splinter in my favor. I insist on paying him for transport, but come off feeling as if I should have insisted on paying him more.

He drives us over, picking up my bike at the bottom of the hill and shoving it above the lumber. He backs into my new driveway, and we unload it together. We’ve practiced loading and unloading lumber together many times, and I know the drill, he slides them out to where I can reach, and then I lift them, trailing along the boards underneath until finally heaving them into their spot.

When we’re done I take him to the building site. Through the archway - not hawthorn now that the leaves have sprouted out, but as of yet unidentified - and over to the trenches, string outlines, and fallen tree.

“That’s a lot of firewood there,” he says.
“Yeah - I’m going to use some of it for support beams.”
“Pardon?” He says, in that quiet unobtrusive way, as if he just happened to miss the last thing you said.
“Some of it’s going to support the roof!”
“Oh, I see, and what’s happening with the tree in the middle?”
“It’s turning into a table. I’m hoping it’ll coppice.”
“A maple like that? Oh for sure. It’ll coppice for sure.”

And in that moment I know. This man may be deaf but he knows how to listen to trees, and this one isn’t dead, only silent.