Putting the Year to Sleep
By: The Singing Arborist
Tags: New Year, Seeds, Winter Solstice, Faith, Trees

Putting the Year to Sleep

December 22, 2020

7:29 am

Today the light begins to increase again; days begin to lengthen. For the last 6 months or so each day has lost a minute or two of daylight, growing shorter as this part of the world approached the darkest day of the year. Earlier this week I was reading the musings of Henry David Thoreau once again, and came across a passage about the wonders of a milkweed seed, how each seed is carefully packed within its “light chest” attached to silk streamers, to be released when the time is right. Thoreau ends the thought with a quiet reflection on the faith of a milkweed plant which “matures its seeds” despite the prophecies of some men that the world would end.

I remember as a child when I would help my father clear a new patch of ground to expand the garden. I was always amazed when, a few weeks later, the soil we had stripped of grass and cultivated began to grow all kinds of weeds that had not been there before. Plants that looked different to me from those we had cleared out to make the garden. “The seeds are all there, waiting to grow at the right time,” my father would tell me. Even then the idea of a seed just waiting there to grow, and then eventually deciding in some way that it was time to sprout, to cast off the protective husk and send out a tiny tendril of life, to risk it all in the hope of becoming something totally new, a plant with leaves that could harvest life from the sun — even as a child I remember thinking there was something mysterious about that. And now as an arborist every now and then I will look at an oak tree standing over 100 feet tall, overshadowing several houses in downtown Columbus, its bulk shouldering up between street and sidewalk, offering food and shelter for possibly hundreds of other plant and animal species. All the while the tree is using sunlight as energy to split a water molecule to use the energy stored in those chemical bonds to gather carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to make carbohydrate for food and structure. Every now and then I will stop my feet from crunching the acorns under such a tree and think “this tree came from an acorn just like one of these under my feet.” I pick up the acorn and look at it, itself an amazing little package, perfectly formed with characteristics unique to its species. If it is in the white oak family it might already have a tiny white root peeking out of one end if it is late fall. But I hold the acorn in my hand where I can see it against its parent, step back, look from one to another. The tree came from one of these. At some point an acorn was produced, carried to one spot or another by a squirrel, a blue jay, a person. Perhaps the acorn was planted, perhaps it was forgotten. But it bided its time, listening, feeling, sensing somehow. Am I anthropomorphizing? Perhaps. But sensing is sensing no matter how you look at it, and sensing is inextricably linked to purpose.

In time something within the acorn trembles — whatever it is waiting for seems to be happening. Moisture, temperature, sunlight. All coalesce and movement begins somewhere in the heart of the acorn. Energy stored within the seed is being consumed, and suddenly a root tip emerges. A purpose is being fulfilled. A stem peers out, pale and spindly, stretching upward with a mixture of hesitancy and confidence — faith.

Special proteins within the seedling called photoreceptors begin to absorb light, responding to very specific light frequencies that cause these proteins to stimulate change: “Produce chlorophyll”; “Expand leaves”; “You’ve emerged from the soil, straighten out your head”; “Stop extending so much, make some branches”; “Make some other pigments so you don’t burn up in the sun”. And so a tree begins.

Question: What is the difference between a seed and a tree? Once the tree begins, what becomes of the seed? Many of us shy away from words like faith because we link them to “religion,” perhaps fearing that such words lead us away from “science” or “real life.” But if we dared we would see that every day, each of us makes decisions based on nothing more than faith. We park our car in the lot and walk into a store, never wondering if our car will be waiting for us or not when we return. We believe so strongly that it will be there that we would be extremely surprised and upset if it were not.

Many of us go to work knowing that come Friday, we will be paid. We stop at the store on the way home and get some milk, fully expecting to wake up tomorrow hungry for breakfast. We expect to wake up so strongly that we would be surprised if we did not.

We walk into a dark room and feel on the wall for something that we know if we just move it one way or another, light will fill the room.

Perhaps because my work takes me outside more than inside I tend to follow the passing of days more by length of light than by the numbers on a calendar. So when winter solstice arrives here in the Midwestern United States I feel movement somewhere inside my chest. A trembling, of sorts, perhaps similar to a seed that is beginning to stir. Something, in this case, history, tells me more light is coming, and I have no reason not to believe it. In fact, I would be surprised if by the end of December the sunlight was not sticking around for several minutes longer per day than it was yesterday. Longest night is beginning to move once more to longest day. And here is a gift: where there is faith, there is hope.

Most of what I have heard and read in the latter part of 2020 is how difficult this year has been for people all over our world. No need to revisit why. Rather than making resolutions for a new year, I am instead going to plant this past year into the fading darkness like a seed into dark soil. And I have faith that, like a seed, it will become something new, something I had never expected it to be, something that will then bear fruit of its own to be planted yet again.

Somewhere I heard about a farmer who plants seeds in a field and then simply goes to sleep. Why? Because he lives by faith. He knows the seed will sprout and turn into plants that will bear a harvest for food.

I like this story. Who doesn’t like to take naps? But even a good nap is not possible without faith.