Spent this weekend planting 134 trees with friends and family. Inspired by this poem as I sit and reflect on the weekend, all before it, and what is to come.
Planting Trees In the mating of trees, the pollen grain entering invisible the domed room of the winds, survives the ghost of the old forest that stood here when we came. The ground invites it, and it will not be gone. I become the familiar of that ghost and its ally, carrying in a bucket twenty trees smaller than weeds, and I plant them along the way of the departure of the ancient host. I return to the ground its original music. It will rise out of the horizon of the grass, and over the heads of the weeds, and it will rise over the horizon of men’s heads. As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizon and orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dream of its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the life these trees may live when I no longer rise in the mornings to be pleased by the green of them shining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them.
Wendell Berry, The Country of Marriage
Here’s a booklet of trees we planted and those around our home.