Memory and Forest

                  A deep silence is all around me, my heart beat pulsing throughout my body. Then a second presence appears in front of me but it slowly starts to fade away before I could truly understand what it is. I look down at my hands and check the time on my phone; my hour has passed, and it was time to go home. But that feeling lingers within me as if it were dragging me back and make me realize something that has remained a mystery to me for most of my life. I look back at the trees and they seem like looming giants against the dark sky. There is something to be discovered here, I just know it.

                  That was the first time I recognized the hidden connection between man and nature. There was a point in time where nature dominated the planet while we were still evolving, learning, completely vulnerable, and at its mercy. To survive in the natural world is one of the hardest challenges man has ever faced. Over the years we have learned to tame nature and build giant civilizations. We seem to have lost that fear of nature but it will always be trying to reclaim what it has lost. Being able to understand the power of nature and what it is capable of can be hard to do in our current time because of all of the distractions with technology. Personally I had lost respect for nature and forgot how to appreciate its true beauty and wonder.

                  Again I arrive at my spot, its frigid cold and I do my best to keep warm. I look around me observing, waiting for something to happen, but I am met with an eerie silence. Everything around me is sleeping, waiting for the warm radiance rays of the spring sun to reawake them. When visiting my spot in the winter, I was always met by this uneasy silence. I was so used to always hearing birds chirping, or bugs buzzing, filling the world around me with a lively sound. That silence seemed eternal when I was visiting my spot. But there was still a presence there that seemed to be observing me as I observed it. We seemed to be getting to know each other by just being around each other, a long lost acquaintance that I haven’t seen in a very long time.

                  The winter season seems to be the hibernation period for most species of nature, a time for recharging after a strenuous period of survival, reproduction, and exploration. This stillness could be described as if the planet was holding its breath all the while waiting with anticipation to take that big gulp of warm air. During my third visit, the temperature was warmer than usual and it was nice to take advantage of this beautiful weather to observe nature’s reaction. There were tiny stem sprouts that poked through the softened soil as if they were testing the air for warmth. I feel as if they send up their stems to test the temperature and the weather waiting for the perfect conditions to blossom. It would be like a human testing the water before jumping in.  But I wasn’t going to observe with my eyes; instead I blindfolded myself and sat among the trees to experience nature from a different perspective.

Perspective: what did this word represent when applied to the natural world? Trees don’t have eyes and as far as I know they don’t have ears or a mouth, at least from a human’s perspective. So by ridding myself of sight I was a step closer to the trees. I could feel the ground I was sitting on, I could hear things nearby and my mind seemed to flow from thought to experience. I was doing my best as an intellectual being to understand something we usually considered dead. If it doesn’t speak, interact, or show life we usually classify it as brain dead or deceased. It was nice to close my eyes and experience this feeling; it made me think of what it would be like if we all lived like a tree and experienced the world around us as we grew older in one spot. What does a tree feel when it falls over, or loses a branch? What does a tree feel when it is uprooted and moved somewhere else? What does it feel when we cut it down? More of these questions kept popping up in my head. Without these “dead things” we would be dead. These beings provide us with oxygen, constantly providing it day after day as if it was specifically created to do so. Was the tree created to provide us oxygen? From an anthropocentric perspective that would be considered a possibility. But trees are just cells seeking to gain as much sunlight and nutrients as possible to live and grow. The shapes of their branches are a living history of how the tree adapted and battled to receive the most sunlight to aid in its growth. The branches are perfect examples of pure natural art, each individual branch twisting and bending, displaying a perfect illustration of survival. This realization of the natural world from a cosmetology perspective reopened my eyes to the true beauty that nature is capable of creating. Every living thing in such a primal environment is part of such intricate artistry detail.
           Visiting my spot each week made me more anxious to experience and recognize the true beauty of nature. But it also allowed me to tap deep into my memories bringing up past experiences and the sense of wonder I had when I was around nature. My past was opened up after seeing a budding daffodil stem in early March, signifying that spring was close by. I really love these flowers, they are really beautiful and they are a very natural flower in my perspective. They are so reliable to bloom to mark the beginning of spring! I look forward to seeing their bright yellow petals shining in the spring sun. I remember always seeing them along the river behind my house when I was a kid. I used to pick them and give them to my mother each spring. We would put them in a vase and I would sometimes break branches with a lot of flowers on them to mix with the daffodils. It must have been the floral designer potential inside of me. I mean we did own a floral shop and I would always watch my grandmother and mother create arrangements that were always so cool to look at. Then this thought occurred to me, what if my love and passion for nature came from that flower shop? Sure I was around a lot of flowers most of the time and they were beautiful but it is somewhat ironic. A flower shop would be to a flower as a slaughter house is to a cow. Cutting the stems off of flowers and shoving flowers in a cold refrigerator so that they would last longer. From a flowers point of view it seems pretty intense. But I was always bewildered by the old greenhouses because the ones that were next to our flower shop were destroyed over time and retaken by the forest. It was amazing! The green house had vines and young trees growing through the cracks of cement. There were old trees that died and fell into the green house to destroy the glass allowing the weather from outside in.             Below is the picture of the flower shop, surrounded by the old green houses. This picture was taken from google maps roughly 12 years after we moved from this property. I would say that in 10 years there would be a young forest sprouting from those green houses. I grew up here; this was my child hood home. I remember playing old Nintendo games near the windows on the right and studying math in the office behind the windows on the left. There would be old gas powered heaters around the shop on the cold mornings and there would be two vans parked in the front for deliveries. My dad and I tried to tame the brush from the green houses but we were only able to scratch the

surface. It was pretty nasty. Rosedale may have a lot of suburban development but there is no scarcity of small forests that can be explored! When I wasn’t playing Nintendo, I was down the road playing in the stream that ran under the driveway. I would play in the woods and climb trees. There was a pine tree that grew very close to the ground and was very wide. I would easily climb into it and lie on the horizontal branches and close my eyes as the wind blew against my face. My love for nature began here; this place inspired me as a little kid. I even had my very own garden that was half an acre big. It was a vegetable garden mind you, but it was mine. I took care of everything, except buying the small plants that we planted. I would weed it every time it needed it and I would water it on the hottest of summer days. I always got so excited when there were vegetables waiting to be picked. It was wonderful. But when my grandmother passed we no longer had a reason to keep the place. My mother sold the property and we moved on with our lives. But if I had to choose or answer where my love for nature originated, my answer would be in that flower shop. It holds great symbolism of my personal past, and a deep connection with nature that can never be severed. This entire memory came from looking at the stem of an un-bloomed daffodil. Maybe this flower is a trigger for all of those happy memories; sort of a key that opens the chest to my passion for nature.

            My passion for nature; that was something that I thought needed to be reflected upon after realizing how much of an impact it had on my in the past. Back then everything was special, nature sparked my curiosity and I couldn’t seem to get enough of it. I feel as if nature triggers something in all of us that allows us to remember our experiences with it. For instance, the loblolly in my space always reminds me of the time when I was around other loblollies.  There was an abandoned horse track deep in the woods and in the center of the track was an old loblolly forest. This was an area that I was able to share the exploration with my younger brother and sister. I remember though, visiting a place with other people around opens up a more explorative feeling deep inside of you. I also found it to be more fun with other people around, especially when those people are ones you are familiar with. My siblings and I love to build things in the forest such as forts or tee pees to sit under and pretend to survive in the wilderness. This is something that we always do together since we were all really young so I was eager to explore this place with them. I have never seen a loblolly forest before this and I was shocked when I got to see what it looks like when you’re in the middle of one. It is actually pretty disorienting because all of the trunks are the same thickness and they are aligned in rows and columns. They were all perpendicular to each other. The only other sight that was similar to what I witnessed would be when you face two mirrors at each other and look inside to see an endless reflection that disappears into darkness. Every direction disappeared within the forest creating a trapped sensation with an absence of hope. But I also recognized another presence, a feeling of adventure and curiosity that drove me deeper into the never-ending forest and before I knew it I was lost. I was pretty scared especially since it was getting darker outside and the shadows around me crept closer threatening to swallow me whole. I was once again at the mercy of nature; as if I lost all of the power I had to tame nature to suit my needs. It was a scary but yet exhilarating feeling.

            Nature has a lot to offer people; it can stimulate all of our sense at the same time. It possesses the ability to create a beautiful landscape for all to see but at the same time conceal the dangers lurking within it. But to humans, nature is often tossed aside, taken for granted, or ignored completely which is why we have lost our inner connections with nature. If we were to observe nature not with just our eyes but with all of our senses maybe there will be more people who will understand what it is all about! I have come to understand the connection I have with nature and reinvigorated it during my visits to my spot with the challenge to do so. We all need to be individually challenged to take some time out of our busy days and spend it with the natural world. We have lost the sense of being around nature and replaced it with new technology that tears apart our connection over time. There is not a moment during my day that I don’t think about the natural world around me and how its day is going. It may sound weird to some people who are not used to acknowledging this connection but it is there for them waiting to be discovered.

Terrence Long