We recently learned about Pando, a clonal aspen tree that is one of the largest and oldest beings on earth. Over 100 acres wide, it has been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years. It is a lesson in how we see, and don’t.
Read More
We recently learned about Pando, a clonal aspen tree that is one of the largest and oldest beings on earth. Over 100 acres wide, it has been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years. It is a lesson in how we see, and don’t.
Read MorePsychologist, yogi, spiritual teacher Ram Dass’ devised a simple method for softening judgments of the people around us.
Read MoreWe recently returned to the Guggenheim Museum with a singular purpose: to revisit the handful of remarkable late paintings artist Alex Katz made of trees, lake, night. Those are really not the subject. He paints the sensation of seeing.
Read MoreA snippet of a Hermann Hesse quote about trees sent us hunting for the whole thing. We stumbled on “Trees: An Anthology of Writings and Paintings”, a little gem of a book: thirty of Hesse’s watercolors with his essays and poetry about trees, for him, a symbol of transcendence and rebirth.
Read MoreDesigner Russel Wright had the habit of shaping parts of the land around Manitoga, his home and studio in upstate New York, into “rooms”. Rather than making a room, I love the idea of an outdoor room coming into being simply by finding it or naming it, as happened when I stumbled on some ancient Beeches. Their branches arch down to the ground to define the space around them, making quiet leafy rooms. The feeling of hanging out in them is extraordinary. Wendell Berry nailed it.
Read MoreThe image of a Serbian Orthodox church inside an oak tree got us thinking about trees being used as churches. What are the qualities of trees that make them a place for sanctuary, reflection, rest, prayer. We found the answer in Jo Shapcott’s glorious poem “I Go Inside the Tree”…
Read MoreAmid the daily deluge of bleak, enervating news about the effects of climate change, we’ve been noticing a strain of defiance: Messages that engender energy and activism rather than despair and paralysis. They offer a thought-provoking and heartening view.
Read MoreLately Mary Oliver has been coming again into our field of vision. This perfect evocation of being among trees is a balm in this ferocious time.
Read MoreWhat started with the hopeful return to old ways of celebrating the holiday season suddenly turned into exhaustion and disappointment at yet another wave of a scary variant. Again. Right now, we want relief from it all: momentary escape, joy, illumination, uplift.
Read MoreOver the years, we’ve found many ways to express thanks. Close to our heart is this W.S. Merwin poem that finds a way to say thanks in the midst of our beautiful, frightening, wounded, wounding world. We offer it with a big hunk of beauty from a Mexican forest.
Read MoreWe have marveled at Susan Simard since we realized she was the model for the fearless, hermetic tree botanist in Richard Price’s wondrous tree-centric novel The Overstory. Her new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Ancient Wisdom of the Forest about the intricate underground communication network trees create and depend upon got us thinking about the perfect gift, for Mother’s day or otherwise.
Read MoreFerris Jabr’s deeply-pleasurable “The Social Life of Forests” tells the story of scientist Susan Simard whose pioneering research changed the way we think about the fundamental nature of forests: as complex deeply-connected networks that allow trees to communicate and cooperate. It offers a powerful lesson for this time of pandemic.
Read MoreIn this video, performance artist Marina Abramovic describes the tree therapy she developed many years ago in the Amazon rainforest. It has become part of her “Abramović Method,
Read MoreSome remarkable writings and images describing intimate encounters with trees got us thinking about what really happens when we sit inside one, climb one, sit in its embrace…
Read MoreRecently, the actual living trees that were the subject of van Gogh’s last painting in 1890 were discovered near the small French town where he lived. A photograph of the trees superimposed with the painting brings to life Gary Snyder’s idea of “tree intensity of mind”, and amplifies our own experience mightily.
Read MoreOpening at random Richard Powers’ remarkable novel The Overstory, we found the ancient formula for gratitude.
Read MoreWatching this perfectly shot video felt so much like we actually were ambling slowly through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that we felt palpably relaxed and dreamy. It is a balm for anyone craving nature.
Read MoreWe’re loving Jane Hirschfeld’s wonderful poem I Wanted to Be Surprised. It is the lens through which we’ve been looking to discover uplifting…surprises…
Read MoreAt first, we only visited the New York Times “Lessons in Stillness from One of the Quiestest Places on Earth” because we wanted to see Mitch Epstein’s remarkable photographs of trees. But then, the story called us…
Read More