Taking Tea with the Trees

Creating commonplace rituals in an effort to *not* die (right now)

NB: I wrote this newsletter prior to Hurricane Idalia’s approach. A revision to shoehorn that event into this piece felt disingenuous, but please know that though the subject matter is quite on the nose, the tone is not befitting of a meteorological disaster. My apologies if any of this lands awkwardly now as we await news from Florida about the severity of the hurricane and its storm surge.

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Living is a terribly tenuous affair. These squishy, miraculous meat suits of ours are vulnerable to all kinds of injury and assault—and then we pack them into metal boxes and fling ourselves down freeways going three times faster than the fastest human can run while casually trying to find “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” on our playlist of guilty pleasure pump up jams.

We do it because if we considered all the ways our fragile, precious lives could end, we’d go mad; I’ve written before about how critical the denial of our mortality is for functioning day-to-day with any hint of comfort. But some days, the truth of our frailty comes crashing down so hard that the ground shakes.

Dark ‘n Stormy

A few days ago, I was bustling around on the porch when the sky turned the queasy color that signals an oncoming storm. There had been no rain on the forecast, but we were also weeks overdue a good soak, so I hustled inside, hoping for a solid, summer gully washer. Within moments, everything was horizontal. Rain sheeted sideways. The ferns tugged against their planters. The flag’s fabric snapped and popped as gusts tormented it. The cat’s ears flattened against his neck.

A loud groan of thunder came from the north, but it was different. Instead of rolling down from the sky, it rumbled out of the earth. Something wasn’t right. Through the rain-streaked window, I could see that a tree had fallen on my neighbor’s house.

It caught a corner of the roof that would mean expensive repairs and at least temporary relocation, but didn’t look lethal. I was still relieved to see my neighbor, a renter I don’t know but have exchanged friendly waves with, emerge when the rain let up. He moved his car and stood staring at the crunched roof with his hands on his head in the universal gesture of “what the hell do I do now?”

Living Among the Trees

My home is surrounded on all sides with huge, old, shade-giving trees. I have more of an arboretum than a garden. Just to be on the safe side, I even had an arborist come out before I closed on the house to reassure me that none of them were widowmakers. But disasters happen and eventually, trees fall. I try not to think about it too much, but every storm season (which is creeping into over half the year now) the hair on my neck stands at attention with every streak of lightning, the muscles in my back tense with each thunderclap.

There’s only so much I can do. The last arborist I hired took me around the yard with her, listening to each tree as she thonked it with her mallet, familiarizing me with the timbre of the timber. She warned me about mushroom growth at the roots and keeping the area free of leaves. She promised me that the gnarled and mossy water oaks “just look like that”. She recommended a crown cleaning, which I’m saving up for and hope will offer me a few more years without incident from my towering neighbors.

I try to keep the ravenous ivy that consumes large swathes of my neighborhood in check. I feel a jolt of pride when I look at the latticework of dead vines laddering up each tree, all that remains after I removed a several foot skirt of the stubborn, invasive plant from their roots. I drag away the deadfall branches to the firepit or occasionally turn a particularly straight specimen denuded of its bark into a curtain rod.

For all those steps, something essential is still missing. No amount of maintaining the trees replaces building a relationship with them. I wanted them to know who stood, grateful, in their shade, who lived in the home they shelter and spare from ruin each day. I wanted a way to show my gratitude more casually, like I would with a friend. So I made us some tea.

Embracing Unremarkable Ritual

I have moved in some pretty hippie, wifty, airy-fairy circles. Now don’t get me wrong: I prefer the company of people who recognize the spirit and agency of the world around them any day. That being said, I still come fully equipped with a modern sense of irony and jaded realism. I have held hands in a large circle singing “Ancestor Star People” using every ounce of energy I possessed to keep my face neutral. I have been wrapped in the center of a spiral hug (think group hug, but 10x more aggressive) possessed by the same paralyzing panic that makes goats faint. And I have watched people do some really weird shit around trees.

Let me reiterate: I love a tree hugger. The world needs more of them. But I’ve also had to navigate my way into a relationship with the animate world that feels authentic and genuine. I would not throw my arms around a new acquaintance, weeping for their beauty and our collective pain at the state of the world. Maybe I’d be a whole lot cooler if I did. Maybe I’d end up with a restraining order. I will not be finding out.

I’m someone who pays attention to the little details. I’ll remember how you take your coffee or the name of your favorite childhood movie (which is a miracle, because I will absolutely forget the date of your birthday). I’ll drop you a postcard just to say hi. My approach to ritual has the same casual thoughtfulness. So when I saw a line of storms on the forecast, I decided my trees were overdue a proper thanking for remaining upright.

I have a loose grasp of herbalism and an even looser one of biodynamic preparations. I am positive that there are proper concoctions to benefit tree growth, but I just sort of freestyled my best guess with what I had on hand. Going for mineral and nutrient heavy herbs, I ended up filling two big mason jars with nettle from a friend’s farm, horsetail from the herb shop, and comfrey from my yard. For some gentle, heart-centered energy/vibes/mojo, I sprinkled in some hawthorn berry and plunked a giant chunk of rose quartz in each one. No idea, just seemed like a good thing to do. By the next morning, the microbes had gotten in on the action. The jars were already fermenting: bubbling, fizzing, and leaking across the kitchen counter.

This is where someone more steeped in elaborate ritual than I would shine. I just took my jars from tree to tree, poured some tea at their roots, said a few words of thanks in my head, took a good look at them in their late summer glory, gave their bark a little pat and moved to the next.

I’ll admit I lingered a little longer with the beech tree - he’s a truly fine looking fella and the one most likely to crush me, so I try to stay on pretty intimate terms. I loved up the oaks a little extra, too; though the arborist taught me the sound of their wood, I wish I were sensitive enough to hear the stories they keep about this piece of land I call home for now and the people who called it home before me. I took a small sip of the brew. It tasted like dirt and seaweed and rock, but it seemed important to partake. Then I went back inside and on about my day.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that every day we get to be alive on this earth is deserving of endless ceremony. They are, after all, numbered. Marcus Aurelius urges: “Let each thing you would do, say, or intend, be like that of a dying person.”

But also, we’re deliciously alive. You, me, the trees in the yard - certainly right now and, with luck, tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. I do not want to live as a guest in the world but to inhabit it, to greet the trees as I would kin. I want them to dig their roots a little deeper, to cling to the earth ferociously in the time we have. I want to hear the clock ticking and make time for tea anyway.