The healing tree is a borderless reality

Spring is about beginnings, those tender tips of emerging green. Up here in the Galloway hills this takes a little longer than down in the south, asking for some patience on our part. At this time of year my tracking gaze always turns toward plants and trees. They ask for our attention during spring, with a boisterous aliveness that is directly imparted to the body when we eat, drink or simply spend time with them.

We are given two doses of green every year, at the spring and autumn equinoxes, beautifully timed to allow our bodies to prepare for, and recover from, a sparse winter. It is good to feel ourselves held in rhythms that work beyond our clocks and calendars - an earth-given intelligence of which we are the receivers rather than the makers.

Winter’s sleep gives rise to many ideas, and these brightening days are filled with rain, wind and healthful herbs that work together to heave us out the dark. There is no more potent time to feel the transition of the seasons. As we slough off our winter skin, it’s energising to step outside and let ourselves be roused with rain and the sun’s increasing light.

But before we leap into too much hurried doing, it’s wise to take time to pause, lean against a well-loved tree and notice the slow and steady way they emerge from their own winter slumber. The sap is rising and the buds and blossom opening, but it’s not a process that happens overnight. It’s a pleasure to feel all that energy steadily working its way through trunks and branches to bring forth soft leaves and flowers – each with its own medicine.

This month I have written an article about my practice of Sleeping with Trees for Dark Mountain, whose writing is a love letter to the uncivilisation of our world. This piece explores my practice of sleeping outside and the simple act of spending time observing the way trees go about their lives.

Surrounding me here in Galloway are many kinds of trees, but best of all is the birch. Spending time in their elegantly unruly company teaches on many levels. With their seeds borne on the wind, these pioneer trees show a joyous disregard for human fences. The healing tree is a borderless reality and observing them asks questions about the boundaries we wish to strengthen and those it’s time to take down.

Birches are found all across the Northern hemisphere, in a stunning variety of form, providing practical and medicinal support to all who are lucky enough to live near them. Sometimes known as ‘nurses’ they grow quickly and improve the soil, their canopies allowing light to reach neighbouring species, while still providing shade to more sensitive young trees like ash, beech and oak, as well as some of the conifers.

They are pioneer trees, said to have followed the retreating ice sheets all those years ago, preparing the ground for other trees. They are trees of extremes, able to withstand great heat and cold (protected by their beautiful, medicinal bark) and transforming unpromising soil, by softening the ground and filling it with nutrition. This work isn’t done with toil and effort, the roots softening the ground and the annual leaf-drop imparting nutrition to the topsoil beneath. What a heartening lesson - that we can nourish the world with our presence by simply being.