a new year for the trees

The snow allows me to go where I usually can’t in good conscience.

Someone has already made a path here, so I follow the deep footfalls cast by snow. Still, I don’t touch sand and keep mindful of slick surfaces as I wind the path past the iced over marsh and back up the dunes to the copse of maritime pine stark against the bright white and pale, sleeping grass. A muted green yet green nonetheless among the hibernating things.

I pass the iced over marsh, near slipping towards it as I follow the faint presses of boots on the slowly thawing ice on the snow which has blended into the frozen water.

Past the sentinel trees standing watch to their stretch of dune, I stop to admire the pinecone-heavy boughs of the tallest tree beckoning. A pitch pine uncharacteristically tall and straight, out of place among the wind-bent and -twisted siblings. The pinecones are prehistoric, a proto-structure unchanged as the conifers which produce them. How many of these trees are renewed from dead terminal shoot or still young from seed? The life of these trees are kept secret.

On the ground is contrast of burst of dark feathers (an implication of violence in a quiet place) and delicate tracks gently imprinted of little birds hopping about. Unknown and unnamed to me, still they exist and still I document the evidence of their presence through photograph and graphite. They are not here but they will return when this place is free of me.

The only sounds are me, the wind, and the creaking snow.

In this copse I am sheltered. The trees are quiet, pine needles dark against bright sky, shadows pale and blue. I am in an older world, sheltered. The maritime pines of here and elsewhere are all familiar, a home. I breathe easy in these seaside copses and forests.

Linking between the Long Island Sound and the maritime chaparrel, pine barrens, coastal sage shrub, and maquis, the threads tie together between haunts and genetic memory. All points in time converge within the liminality of this place as on all beaches. Trees have been here long before us and will remain long after us, bearing silent witness.

I thank the trees for their presence and move along, back into the path of the wind and off the laid path.

I think of Tu BiShvat and of the trees as I go past half buried shrubs with limbs stuck up past the snow hugging trunk and needles. I pass other conifer groups, as if huddled together in comfort. The trees have been there us, from veneration to deforestation over history. A struggle to counteract the destruction continues but this is how it should be: to keep the work going so we have the chance to return to equilibrium.

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To learn more about Tu BiShvat, read this entry from Aish. In brief: it is a Jewish holiday not of specific religious meaning but one that celebrates trees in modern times where it’s more akin to arbor day and earth day. In the past, it was more of an agricultural marker for farmers with practical purpose. There is a history of tree veneration in Judaism which had waned but is seeing some revival in the 21st century. It is a minor holiday but it’s one of the favorites. I enjoy taking time to walk among trees, my favorite being maritime forests but any tree is a good tree.

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