Crew: Golf
The trees here are tall. Not redwood tall, I've seen the redwoods, towering, uncompromising. Not so out here. These trees are thin and willowy, like a gentle breeze could snap them in two. Alas, they stand, grow, thrive. All these trees do is compromise, shooting up in families in forests on sheer mountain slopes and over the banks upon which coalesce the foam of raging rivers, white water that cuts away, day after day, at the very land which holds them fast, land on which they live but also land which lives by them--held together by the systems of their roots. Even more so on the slopes where, without the tight grip of their buried tendrils, surely rock and dirt would be left to tumble at any, wind or rain, these trees do work. The ones which always seem to catch my eye--the tallest, straightest, spindliest among them, smooth trunks topped only by the barest tufts of green, like watchtowers, lighthouses, or the opposite of that, like the flowers of giants, or maybe the weeds--are trees like that. They have a purpose to which they seem well suited, what else can we ask for? And yet I cannot help but wonder, why do they do it?
When I came out here I couldn't tell birch bark from brittle ashe. Now I look differently. One of my crew-mates taught me the difference between spruce and fir and pine. I could explain it here, but you probably wouldn't get it. Or, it wouldn't stick with you. If you could feel it, touch them, you would, and maybe it would. It's a physical, tactile experience of understanding these trees by which I have come to know their particular identities. Now I look with the pads of my fingertips, too. Now, when I think about these things, I think not just according to their nature but also with attention to their physicality, as is one according to the other; concert.
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It's easy to get lost out here. In the woods, obviously, but also in the morning, at that first whiff of foggy day, eating, cooking, together, on a weekend hike, the views, the trees, the mountainsides, they invite you into them, to feel a piece of their puzzle. When I work, I
sometimes feel the opposite of this. Nature is, by nature, but I am human, actor, industry. As
such: not together, not one, not simple. But this is the work that pays.
Perhaps we might differentiate our work by the opportunity we create, opportunity for greater understandings of the wild things which these days are too often left by the sidelines, so more might learn to think with their hands and touch with their minds. Certainly without these places, this work, we all would be bereft, both we who do it and those who will inevitably come after. Whatever the case, we surely have elevated ourselves above that which we proport to love. Perhaps this is inevitable, the natural endpoint of our shared ontological predisposition. We are all human, and as such the center of our human world, the center of our human universe. Do these ends justify the means? I do not know. From somewhere, someone, a call for rest. The screams of the saw fall to the quiet of the wood, leaving only the faint smell of dust, and we pause for breath.
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The trees out here frame the sky. Lying down, looking up at it, the stars stand above me like the tops of a thousand thousand strings, reaching down, tugging at me. There is a strange kind of motion in their stillness, it comes from them, from the way they spread out above me, but it is a motion that is within my own self, the capillaries of my heart or the pit of my stomach. It would be more comfortable to turn away, far easier to sleep on my side. When I wake, my glasses will have dug deep into the sides of my head but I cannot bear to take them off, to let the myriad little lights fade to blurry nothing. Instead, I will fall asleep like this. When my father first got glasses as a child, he realized that trees had individual leaves. Now I wonder whether he struggled then like I do now. The mountain cold moves around us like deep sea currents. We are the caterpillar, safely entombed, changing yet dying, warm yet freezing, unsure of that which approaches ever faster. A cloud moves over the stars, then passes. The trees bear witness to our metamorphosis.
