soft running speech is such an apt name for cottonwood. It has always been a spiritual tree for me as well. I feel like the voice of God speaks through it!
I had never seen a Parula before. What a beautiful bird!
I first saw the concept of a food forest in South Carolina a few years ago on a private farm.
But what a great concept of offering the idea to local parks departments! I love it!
Yes. That is exactly the recognition. I think anyone who has stood under a cottonwood for long enough has felt that, even if they have not had the language for it. The Plains peoples named it the talking tree for the same reason. Some sounds are too steady and too patient to be only sound. Thank you for reading, and for naming what the cottonwood gave you.
Northern Parulas are stunning. The blue-gray back, the yellow throat, that small dark band across the chest. They are usually higher in the canopy than people look, which is why most folks miss them. Once you know to look up, they are everywhere in May. Glad to have introduced you to one.
Ten years in, our Refuge Food Forest is now one of the most visited parts of the One Normal Plaza. People love it.
Thank you for reading with such an open heart. The love comes back to me in comments like this, and it keeps the work going. I am glad the cottonwood reached you.
There was a pair of huge cottonwoods growing close together near our huge gardens in the bottomland where we grew up. We called them the twin cottonwoods. They were right next to the stream and it was a good spot for finding morels. I loved standing between the two trees and looking up the thickly grooved bark, following the trunks slanting away from each other to find the sun. They were struck by lightning one summer, splitting the bark of both trees and they died over the next few years, but stood naturally until they fell on their own time adding to the rich black soil.
This is its own essay. Thank you for telling me about the twin cottonwoods. The slanting trunks looking for sun, the morels at their feet, the lightning, the slow death, the falling on their own time into the soil that fed them — every part of that is what cottonwoods give us if we have the patience to stay with them across the years. I can picture you standing between the two of them looking up. Some places we never quite leave, even after the trees are gone.
Sigh…. You have such an ability to touch us. Thank goodness for your Parks Department quietly making a difference. Thank goodness for the kids who reminded you that the song never finishes, it just changes its tune.
I’m so glad to live in a rural village, so full of peace. I’m so glad to volunteer at a wonderful Botanic Gardens not far away. When our big trees fall, we try to leave as much as we can, to remind people that death is an equally valid part of the story, that what appears as death to us is just a change of status and stature and that the ‘dead’ tree moves on to feed a cast of thousands and eventually the soil beneath it.
The song never finishes, it just changes its tune. You have written a lyric in a comment box. I am taking that one with me. And what your Botanic Gardens is doing with fallen trees is the practice this essay was reaching toward — leaving as much as you can, letting the cast of thousands take over. That is exactly it. Death as a change of status and stature is the right framing. Trees do not really die in the way we mean when we use the word. They just become available to other lives. Thank you for telling me where you are doing this work, and for reading.
I love this essay so much. It’s a combination of Bill’s thoughtfulness and visionary thinking and my personal affinity to community engagement as a way to make real change. If you can be kind, persistent, and patient, you can accomplish so much.
Mercy, you have been kind, persistent, and patient with me for many years now, and look how much you have accomplished. Thank you for being my first reader, my best editor, and the person who reminds me that community engagement happens at the kitchen table before it happens anywhere else.
Strangely, I was talking to the oldest tree in our yard just yesterday, Bill, while I was raking the forest. At least when you live in the woods, grass to forest edge is a very blurred line. And I like it that way. A sacred ancient, whose sapwood has long ago turned to heartwood. Hollowed out by various beings, looking for a safe haven to nest in, or excavated for a nourishing meal. Still it stands with a very severe antalgic lean. Not even a skeletal canopy—crumbling sawdust and old bark. Over the years, it has provided for many since we first met in the mid-eighties. We were hoping to provide a soft landing so its shell can continue its sacred mission to preserve life. Perhaps it will fall cushioned amongst the leave debris.Like you,I gently touched its bark knowing a breeze might take it down any day, or maybe next year? I patted it like a baby, ‘there there, not to worry, soon you will feed the land’. It will certainly be a sad day to see it lying horizontal. But your stunning words have given me hope and fill me with delight, knowing this amazing life, this one tree, has lived and died, and will continue to infinitely be part of the same cycle. It is a wonderful proposal, Bill. And no doubt the most beautiful ever written. You put your heart into it.“The cottonwood brought the sky to the ground”, indeed.
This is the most beautiful comment I have read in years. Antalgic lean is the precise medical term applied with such tenderness that the tree becomes a patient under your care. And the moment when you patted it like a baby and said there there, not to worry, soon you will feed the land — that is the whole essay, in one gesture, performed by you in your own yard with a tree you have known since the eighties. You have already lived what I was writing toward. Thank you for telling me. I hope when the day comes, the leaf debris is deep, and the soft landing carries the tree gently back to the earth that fed it. The conversation does not end. It just changes its tune, as another reader said earlier in this thread.
Thank you, Bill. What a lovely reply. On a side note, my husband is a chiropractic physician and I ran the office for 38 years. Antaglic lean seemed naturally appropriate. I have seen many a human walk into the office in the same position as the tree.
Thank you, Vickie. The community is doing the real work — the parks crews, the food forest volunteers, the neighbors who show up to plant trees and pull invasives. I am just trying to capture and share the story. Glad to have you here.
Bill, your essay reminded me of a lovely children's book I read to my sons 30+ years ago, which tells the story you presented here. I was delighted to find Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova online. I gave it away years ago, but now I can order a copy for my soon-to-arrive first grandbaby. Warmest thanks :-)
Thank you, Bill, for your tribute to cottonwoods. I grew up loving their music and shade. In the middle of Kansas, they were a reliable tree growing along often-dry stream beds. I’m glad that you shared about the gifts they offer to the food web. May they continue to flourish.
Mission accepted. Email sent to the county parks dept. As we enter the warm season and recreational use of our parks ramps up, it feels like an apt time to share our views for what we hope the future of our parks will be.
I, too, am one of the quiet hiker / birdwatchers but try hard to keep my thumb on the pulse of our local green and blue spaces, and speak out when they're threatened. As a writer, I feel more comfortable reaching out to officials via email and contribute regular opinion pieces to our regional newspapers advocating for wildlife, native plantings, and habitat restoration. But a friend encouraged me to go along to a town hall type meeting to advocate for native tree plantings (vs the non-native species the county usually favors) when the city was awarded a grant to plant more trees in underserved neighborhoods--I can confirm that it's easier to speak up than you'd think. You can even read off a prepared script!
Wood chips around my beloved cottonwoods along our driveway have been added to the top of our project list for this year. Thank you for sharing that important information! May the party and chatter among these trees continue for decades to come. PS this project will be done today!
utterly lovely !!~ trees hear us and our tones to them they are a kind of "people".. it is no accident that the Tree is the central universal symbol -- the Tree of Life at the Centre of Paradise..with qualities of verticality --majestic protector!
I grew a baobab from seed-- i watched it unfurl and at last shrug off the tough seed.. I live in Kentucky so it has to come inside for the winter. I keep telling it thats its not long before it can again enjoy the outdoors with moonlight and rain caressing its leaves and BIRDS hopping on its branches with tiny touches!! its very tall and has an unusual trunk/root. I met its mother in Gambia. Gray Henry grayh101@aol.com
I looked up the Parula and it looks like it's range is Midwest to East coast. That explains why I had not seen one in Idaho! Next time I am in the East, I will certainly keep my eyes open for them! They really are beautiful!
So glad your food forest has become a favorite place for people. It was one of the most amazing concepts to me for feeding people, birds and wildlife!
I can't find the linked proposal on The Talking Tree and want to include it when I forward the article to my son, who is a town planner in Vermont. Can you help me find it?
It’s easy to miss the link. It’s embedded in about the 14th paragraph after the last photo (the 6th photo).
Look for the paragraph that begins: “Our proposal is LINKED on the Easy By Nature Substack in three versions: a two-page summary, a six-page brief, and a full thirty-six-page document.”
The word “LINKED” is underlined. Just click on “LINKED” and it takes you to the proposal and related documents.
To N Johnson, First I need to say that technology is not my strongest skill. But let's try this alternative. I am sharing the URL that should take you straight to the same thing that the article's embedded link takes you to. https://billdavison.substack.com/p/resources?back=%2Fpublish%2Fsettings%23Pages When you click on this you should see a page with the heading "RESOURCES" and a list including three "Natural Areas Plan for Parks Departments" reports as well as other helpful resources. May I also suggest that your son who is a town planner is likely more tech savvy than we are, and if you forward Bill's article to him, your son will see the embedded link in the article and probably be able to easily access the attachments. Good luck!
soft running speech is such an apt name for cottonwood. It has always been a spiritual tree for me as well. I feel like the voice of God speaks through it!
I had never seen a Parula before. What a beautiful bird!
I first saw the concept of a food forest in South Carolina a few years ago on a private farm.
But what a great concept of offering the idea to local parks departments! I love it!
Yes. That is exactly the recognition. I think anyone who has stood under a cottonwood for long enough has felt that, even if they have not had the language for it. The Plains peoples named it the talking tree for the same reason. Some sounds are too steady and too patient to be only sound. Thank you for reading, and for naming what the cottonwood gave you.
Northern Parulas are stunning. The blue-gray back, the yellow throat, that small dark band across the chest. They are usually higher in the canopy than people look, which is why most folks miss them. Once you know to look up, they are everywhere in May. Glad to have introduced you to one.
Ten years in, our Refuge Food Forest is now one of the most visited parts of the One Normal Plaza. People love it.
So perfectly lovely! Thank you. I feel your love and appreciation for nature in every word and it fills me with joy!
Thank you for reading with such an open heart. The love comes back to me in comments like this, and it keeps the work going. I am glad the cottonwood reached you.
There was a pair of huge cottonwoods growing close together near our huge gardens in the bottomland where we grew up. We called them the twin cottonwoods. They were right next to the stream and it was a good spot for finding morels. I loved standing between the two trees and looking up the thickly grooved bark, following the trunks slanting away from each other to find the sun. They were struck by lightning one summer, splitting the bark of both trees and they died over the next few years, but stood naturally until they fell on their own time adding to the rich black soil.
This is its own essay. Thank you for telling me about the twin cottonwoods. The slanting trunks looking for sun, the morels at their feet, the lightning, the slow death, the falling on their own time into the soil that fed them — every part of that is what cottonwoods give us if we have the patience to stay with them across the years. I can picture you standing between the two of them looking up. Some places we never quite leave, even after the trees are gone.
Sigh…. You have such an ability to touch us. Thank goodness for your Parks Department quietly making a difference. Thank goodness for the kids who reminded you that the song never finishes, it just changes its tune.
I’m so glad to live in a rural village, so full of peace. I’m so glad to volunteer at a wonderful Botanic Gardens not far away. When our big trees fall, we try to leave as much as we can, to remind people that death is an equally valid part of the story, that what appears as death to us is just a change of status and stature and that the ‘dead’ tree moves on to feed a cast of thousands and eventually the soil beneath it.
Another wonderful post. Thanks so much.
The song never finishes, it just changes its tune. You have written a lyric in a comment box. I am taking that one with me. And what your Botanic Gardens is doing with fallen trees is the practice this essay was reaching toward — leaving as much as you can, letting the cast of thousands take over. That is exactly it. Death as a change of status and stature is the right framing. Trees do not really die in the way we mean when we use the word. They just become available to other lives. Thank you for telling me where you are doing this work, and for reading.
I love this essay so much. It’s a combination of Bill’s thoughtfulness and visionary thinking and my personal affinity to community engagement as a way to make real change. If you can be kind, persistent, and patient, you can accomplish so much.
Mercy, you have been kind, persistent, and patient with me for many years now, and look how much you have accomplished. Thank you for being my first reader, my best editor, and the person who reminds me that community engagement happens at the kitchen table before it happens anywhere else.
“If you can be kind, persistent, and patient, you can accomplish so much” Like the Cottonwood.
Strangely, I was talking to the oldest tree in our yard just yesterday, Bill, while I was raking the forest. At least when you live in the woods, grass to forest edge is a very blurred line. And I like it that way. A sacred ancient, whose sapwood has long ago turned to heartwood. Hollowed out by various beings, looking for a safe haven to nest in, or excavated for a nourishing meal. Still it stands with a very severe antalgic lean. Not even a skeletal canopy—crumbling sawdust and old bark. Over the years, it has provided for many since we first met in the mid-eighties. We were hoping to provide a soft landing so its shell can continue its sacred mission to preserve life. Perhaps it will fall cushioned amongst the leave debris.Like you,I gently touched its bark knowing a breeze might take it down any day, or maybe next year? I patted it like a baby, ‘there there, not to worry, soon you will feed the land’. It will certainly be a sad day to see it lying horizontal. But your stunning words have given me hope and fill me with delight, knowing this amazing life, this one tree, has lived and died, and will continue to infinitely be part of the same cycle. It is a wonderful proposal, Bill. And no doubt the most beautiful ever written. You put your heart into it.“The cottonwood brought the sky to the ground”, indeed.
This is the most beautiful comment I have read in years. Antalgic lean is the precise medical term applied with such tenderness that the tree becomes a patient under your care. And the moment when you patted it like a baby and said there there, not to worry, soon you will feed the land — that is the whole essay, in one gesture, performed by you in your own yard with a tree you have known since the eighties. You have already lived what I was writing toward. Thank you for telling me. I hope when the day comes, the leaf debris is deep, and the soft landing carries the tree gently back to the earth that fed it. The conversation does not end. It just changes its tune, as another reader said earlier in this thread.
Thank you, Bill. What a lovely reply. On a side note, my husband is a chiropractic physician and I ran the office for 38 years. Antaglic lean seemed naturally appropriate. I have seen many a human walk into the office in the same position as the tree.
What a beautiful read! Thank you and a shout out to your community!
Thank you, Vickie. The community is doing the real work — the parks crews, the food forest volunteers, the neighbors who show up to plant trees and pull invasives. I am just trying to capture and share the story. Glad to have you here.
Bill, your essay reminded me of a lovely children's book I read to my sons 30+ years ago, which tells the story you presented here. I was delighted to find Once There Was a Tree by Natalia Romanova online. I gave it away years ago, but now I can order a copy for my soon-to-arrive first grandbaby. Warmest thanks :-)
you gotta cool it with these bangers, the Mossad is gonna come after you
"the default will move" -> "the Overton window will shift"
Thank you, Bill, for your tribute to cottonwoods. I grew up loving their music and shade. In the middle of Kansas, they were a reliable tree growing along often-dry stream beds. I’m glad that you shared about the gifts they offer to the food web. May they continue to flourish.
Mission accepted. Email sent to the county parks dept. As we enter the warm season and recreational use of our parks ramps up, it feels like an apt time to share our views for what we hope the future of our parks will be.
I, too, am one of the quiet hiker / birdwatchers but try hard to keep my thumb on the pulse of our local green and blue spaces, and speak out when they're threatened. As a writer, I feel more comfortable reaching out to officials via email and contribute regular opinion pieces to our regional newspapers advocating for wildlife, native plantings, and habitat restoration. But a friend encouraged me to go along to a town hall type meeting to advocate for native tree plantings (vs the non-native species the county usually favors) when the city was awarded a grant to plant more trees in underserved neighborhoods--I can confirm that it's easier to speak up than you'd think. You can even read off a prepared script!
Wood chips around my beloved cottonwoods along our driveway have been added to the top of our project list for this year. Thank you for sharing that important information! May the party and chatter among these trees continue for decades to come. PS this project will be done today!
utterly lovely !!~ trees hear us and our tones to them they are a kind of "people".. it is no accident that the Tree is the central universal symbol -- the Tree of Life at the Centre of Paradise..with qualities of verticality --majestic protector!
I grew a baobab from seed-- i watched it unfurl and at last shrug off the tough seed.. I live in Kentucky so it has to come inside for the winter. I keep telling it thats its not long before it can again enjoy the outdoors with moonlight and rain caressing its leaves and BIRDS hopping on its branches with tiny touches!! its very tall and has an unusual trunk/root. I met its mother in Gambia. Gray Henry grayh101@aol.com
I looked up the Parula and it looks like it's range is Midwest to East coast. That explains why I had not seen one in Idaho! Next time I am in the East, I will certainly keep my eyes open for them! They really are beautiful!
So glad your food forest has become a favorite place for people. It was one of the most amazing concepts to me for feeding people, birds and wildlife!
I can't find the linked proposal on The Talking Tree and want to include it when I forward the article to my son, who is a town planner in Vermont. Can you help me find it?
It’s easy to miss the link. It’s embedded in about the 14th paragraph after the last photo (the 6th photo).
Look for the paragraph that begins: “Our proposal is LINKED on the Easy By Nature Substack in three versions: a two-page summary, a six-page brief, and a full thirty-six-page document.”
The word “LINKED” is underlined. Just click on “LINKED” and it takes you to the proposal and related documents.
I clicked on it, but it just takes me back to the original list of posts. What am I doing wrong?
THANK YOU!! Your link worked! And you are right...I should simply have sent the article. I greatly appreciate your help. 😊
To N Johnson, First I need to say that technology is not my strongest skill. But let's try this alternative. I am sharing the URL that should take you straight to the same thing that the article's embedded link takes you to. https://billdavison.substack.com/p/resources?back=%2Fpublish%2Fsettings%23Pages When you click on this you should see a page with the heading "RESOURCES" and a list including three "Natural Areas Plan for Parks Departments" reports as well as other helpful resources. May I also suggest that your son who is a town planner is likely more tech savvy than we are, and if you forward Bill's article to him, your son will see the embedded link in the article and probably be able to easily access the attachments. Good luck!
Thank you for all the work behind this essay, and for sharing the info.
Thank you for reading. The work is its own reward, and comments like this make it lighter. Glad the information found a home.