A Walk In The Park

They say that when you notice a plant in the woods, it has stood up and called your name.

In my life I’ve known many plants to stop me in my tracks and, having only recently come across this concept, I find I’m longing to go back and listen more closely to what they wanted to say; clawing through the endless filing cabinets in my mind for those ethereal moments when my eyes landed, my breath caught, and my heart leapt with joy, spirit fingers and all.

Not much luck yet, but still I claw.

Likewise, I’ve known many parks throughout my life. Some of them - many of them - I’ve fallen deeply, madly, desperately in love with. I’ve felt the pang of despair at our separation, after not being able to visit for too long, even while in the midst of wandering through another wondrous place.

(Yearning for Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, for example, while living a wholly different life in Chiang Mai, Thailand feels like a sin I almost shouldn’t have the nerve to mention here.)

It’s the trees, I have to admit. All manner of plants, in all shapes and sizes, have called to me at one time or another, and I have awed them without hierarchy, but it’s a mere sigh from the swaying trees that will bring me to my knees.

The first of these trees were the Tahoe pines. There are few things that will slap me so hard and lovingly across the face as rolling down the windows on a drive back to the lake and taking a deep breath. Probably it makes me a momentary driving hazard and I should be more wary, but that’s just one of those things you do long before you make with any thinking about it. Like tasting the cookie dough, or stretching in the morning, or mirroring a smiling stranger.

The Bristlecones, in particular, stole my heart in the first moment I saw them, and cradle it to this day. Their unapologetic twists and curves and swirling of colors – into expressions as unique to each tree as you’ll ever find in a species – imprinted an image in my mind that I can never avoid at hearing the word “gnarled.” Their penchant for growing straight out of a sheer rock face instilled within me a powerful early example of tenacity and resilience. So no need for my dad to throw out, later, the fact that they’re the oldest living trees on the planet, though it did leave me stupefied to find that I could love them even more.

(This not to be confused, by the way, with the oldest species of tree on the planet, which falls to the legendary, prehistoric Ginkgo. Beyond its quiet, breathtaking majesty, its capacity for still producing exactly the same youthful cells in a 660-year-old tree as a 16-year-old tree still has biologists both squealing with glee and scratching their heads. Not to mention their infamous survival of the bombing at Hiroshima! But I digress…)

Living in the Appalachian Mountains, I marveled at the Birch, the Hemlock, the Black Locust, the Witch Hazel.

In Nashville, I was smitten with the Dogwood, the Redbud, the Linden, and the Maple.

But across all of these places, I am always brought home by the unfaltering presence of the oaks. Though they change in each place in their shape and size, I always recognize them before I realize that I do (another one of those things), and my heart finds anchor in an echo of my past, however many hundreds or thousands of miles away I might be.

In a place deep within me, the child of my Self wonders if these oaks are all connected – a vast network that knows no expanse too great, echoing in a very literal sense those broad, squat, stocky oaks in the Sierra foothills, that long ago watched and shaded and smiled at me as I whirled wildly through my imaginary realms.

She wonders if these oaks – in North Carolina or Oklahoma or Idaho or wherever else I’ve been – do also feel a quick flutter in their collective heart, as they recognize in me a child that blissfully clung to their trunks, climbed their branches, and felt peace in their shadows. Do these great oaks not-so-secretly share a common path to the heart of our oldest mother?

And so now I find myself again in the northern leanings of the California Central Valley, in a small city called Chico, that to my delight is in itself a veritable arboretum. I mean, really – the wealthy benefactors and founders of this town planted trees from all over the world. You might imagine my elation.

And within all of that, there is a place called Bidwell Park.

And in that place, there are tall, towering oaks that cast a great, protective span over what feels like endless wonders beneath. Oaks that reach far to the sky, that my brain can never quite fully process for the sheer funhouse-mirror effect they have on the ones I know in my roots.

But it is not for my brain that the wonders stand up and call my name.

I’ve lived, left, and returned to this city a couple of times in my life, and this park has been a sanctuary, refuge, escape, and playground for me for more times than I, personally, think can be counted.

On the more formally factoidal of notes, this nearly 3,700-acre piece of park magic was the scene of Sherwood Forest in the 1938 film, “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (with Basil Rathbone!), and additionally was used for some exterior shots in “Gone With The Wind.”

On the much darker of notes, there was a time long ago when I’d found myself cornered in an abusive relationship, and I would spend an hour, two hours, however much time here extremely frequently, wandering without aim, getting lost, having peace, soothing my heart, the forest and its enchantments joyously welcoming me.

And on the notes of the in-betweens, which is all the dang time, this is a place for getting up early to run with my dog and play in the creek afterward. This is a place to practice strengthening the connection between my head and my heart, to walk with my posture beaming to the sky, my head & shoulders light as a feather, my lungs full, my gait smooth and intentional. To improve my ability to perceive through my heart, to strengthen my chances of hearing those calls, to tune into those divine beings that would so care to honor me. You wouldn’t believe what a constant source of bliss this relationship with the natural world can turn into. It’s life-changing realizing how many – many – are in your corner.

And so… I go to listen. And every time I listen, I hear a little bit more. And when I listen, I’m shown new things. I’m given new answers.

Sometimes these revelations are sudden bursts of wild blackberries, or a timid, single patch of magnificent purple flowers, or a stunning shadow-dance of sunshine around and straight through the very skin of the leaves, or a honey-sweet floral scent that you can’t quite find the source of, but it joins you for a little while like a sweet-whispering ghost.

– Let me not fail to mention here, every single one of these things are, definitively, forms of communication, and plants are talking to us all the slipping time. –

But sometimes these revelations are puzzle pieces. Sometimes the oaks, the sycamores, the wild grapes, and the poke berries whisper infallible advice, and you’d not ever know it outside of the epiphanies that just… keep… seeming to show up. Time and time and time again. Aha. And of course. And finally.

There’s a secret, in all of this, and I know it. And I keep coming back to draw the lines in my heart’s eye a little more clearly, to build upon my dictionary and jot down more of this language, that my mind might translate it a little bit better. The answer is there, if I only keep chipping away.

In the meantime, I’ll settle on what I expressed to one of my closest of homeboys the other day. “That park is magic,” I tell him (and you). “I love taking Nanners on walks & runs there. It’s a great way to have a bunch of people smile and say ‘good morning’ atchya.”

I’m onto something. I can feel it.

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For any who'd like to stroll a little longer...

Last but not least...

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Important Sources!

Gorgeous photo of the N. Carolina Appalachian forest graciously shared by the amazing people working hard to protect it, at www.WildSouth.org;

Photo of the glorious golden Ginkgo tree at Anraku-Ji Temple in Hiroshima, Japan courtesy of www.GetHiroshima.com;

Beautiful photo of the pink Eastern Redbud tree in early Tennessee springtime is the product of the talented Robin Conover at The Tennessee Magazine.

"Lupines, California Poppies, and Oak Trees" and "Ancient Bristlecone Pine Tree, California" photos legally acquired from iStockPhoto.com and Dreamstime.com, respectively.

All other photos artistic property of the author.