Nox: A Deciduous Affair

December 3rd 2018

Hey world.

In my garden there is a beautiful, inspirational tree. This tree, whom I have named Nox, is very special to me. Those of you who have read some of my earlier posts will be aware that I am a huge dendrophile, and adore anything with leaves. Trees, to me are incredibly spiratual things what are so much more than wood and sap. Trees capture and store excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and give off oxygen, giving us air to breathe. They regulate the climate, filter water, provide foods, medicines and provide habitats for countless living creatures.
Trees are the lungs of the earth and are a fundamental part of our environment that allows us to survive. The poet Khalil Gibran shows how fatuous our attempts to make art appear beside nature:

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper, so that we may record our emptiness.”

Trees have a lot of symbolism and philosophy to them as well. They have appeared in mythology and religion since the beginning of time. Trees have always been regarded as having sacred or spiratual value with the ability to grant wishes or heal. The Japanese have wishing trees where they write a wish on a slip of paper and then they tie it to the branches of a tree in the hopes that their wish will be granted. People have given offerings to trees too, coins seemed to be very popular. In Scotland, there are numerous fallen wish trees that are covered in coins that people have hammered into the bark, according to the local tradition that if they did this their wish might be granted.

Trees are not only regarded as sacred because they have the ability to grant wishes. They are also signifigant for their resilience, wisdom, and adaptability. Their annual cycle is associated with the natural development of life, death and regeneration. Humans have been pondering their cycle and the symbolism thereof for centuries. How can something seemingly die in the autumn and stay bare for of all the winter months and then suddenly come back to life? I have previously blogged about Philip Larkin’s poem ‘The Trees’ which explores their rebirth every spring, be sure to check that out before you continue. Trees symbolize hope and renewal. They remind us that we can start again.

Someone told me recently that they thought that trees in winter looked a lot like upside down diagrams of lungs. Now everytime I look at their bare limbs all I can see are alvioli. Anyway, my tree, Nox, is especially beautiful because he is very old and so therefore is very wise. I got very upset recently because the neighbours next door deemed one of his branches to be intruding in their garden. Now he is missing a big branch and I was worried about him. So I wrote a poem about him on a cold November night:

My tree tells me that he does not feel the cold.
He cradles his new stump, his back to the biting wind which
hungrily consumes his few remaining fragile leaves-
they seem to indicate that the days of Autumn, among other things, are
numbered.
The frost prowls in the east on the mountains, impatient
for the sinking sun to go to bed. I look up to him, my strong, unflinching tree who
holds up the rising stars.
Though the wind snaps and growls around his skeletal frame, he remains
upright and undaunted. I get my strength from him.
I grieved his summer hair which came out in clumps in mid October,
making his bones stick out and gave him a sickly countenance.
His hair lay in crunching piles in the corners of my yard. Despite his brittle
appearance, he took my hand in his stick thin one. Though his hand is cold,
his grip is strong. We will
face these icy blasts together, he says. Together we will hold on,
hold on tight until
spring.

Hold on, world.

-A Heezen