Magnolias for Days

On late afternoon and evening walks, I continuously become surprised by the plants and animals that catch my attention. It's as if every time I step out for walk, day after day after week after year after decades, a new flourishing has begun and the natural world, perhaps due to its lately acknowledged precariousness, becomes more fragrant, more vivid, more textured. Despite this, accessing this wilderness makes me feel the poignancy of life, especially as this place emerges, struggling, right between the cracks: the divisions and partitioning of a different landscape: that of mis-matched houses, fresh cement and older, broken cement, brightly painted shiny cars or else smashed, plastic toys, stray and blind cats and their counterparts, looking out, recently groomed and curious, the dogs sniveling and mean, stuck with uncaring owners, or else wonderfully mild, tamed, friendly.

I've begun to really notice the magnolia trees in our neighborhood. There are so many of them, and though I've seen them before, I never fully appreciated their beauty. They have a light yet distinct sweet scent. They carry graceful strength, clearly seen as their branches rise up, hardy and pliant, blossoming, uprooted and splayed out each spring. It's tempting to chide them for showing off, but this is no work of their own, they reply. 

Magnolias stand on front lawns and are found within backyards. They take root along sidewalks, branches hovering over the place where people walk and jog, hovering over the streets as cars rush by spouting gas and loud music, releasing pot and pointless conversation into the air, all mixing. 

Many of them are North American natives (others can be found in South America, the Himalayas, and East Asia). The magnolias we have here at the edge of Chicago are hybrids of two Asian magnolias (at least that's my hypothesis, drawing from information I've gathered from the World Book Encyclopedia online as well as the Encyclopedia Britannica online). The hybrid, called the saucer magnolia, has light - dark pink flowers. 

Much of this past April and so far all of May (save for one day) has been gloomy with a whitish grey pallor blanketing the high sky, the sun only coming out in glimpses. Magnolias somehow know it's time to emerge, so they do, as if deeply embedded in their genetic code, without caring if a new plague has come, not worrying about the hazardous elements threatening its existence. If anything, they're the best example of blind faith I've witnessed thus far. Still though, once released, some petals turn sour, fading into a deadened soft brownish burn, a slow decay noting changes, the added harms to a habitat geographically in place yet so much changed, the rapidity of cold to warm, the moody air. 

I wonder if they might retreat and never return. Where will they go off to? Will they wait it out? Reconstruct themselves from the inside out? Will they disappear and leave ashes for us to create a new language from? Will they linger in limbo, become a zombie plant of doom? I bet they'll return, same as always, unchanging in all iterations, scorched by the sun or fully perfect in their incomprehensible belief in the reasonable unknown, its sensory upbringing. 

To pay homage to these seemingly uninterested biological beings of form, color, shadow, texture, growth is to say that the fact of being here, present, in life - however long, however short - is nothing short of a miracle, incomprehensible and hellish as it may seem. To embrace that impossibility before it is vanquished. 

- F 

Slow Information

If there is a place that can be associated with “slow information” it would be a tie between being in nature and in libraries. Both encourage reflection and peace, contain plenty of the beautiful (and the sublime), and are free to enjoy. As a proponent of slow information, I love them almost equally — libraries have the slight edge, however, because it’s rarely too cold there, and one need not be wary of bears."

 Article from Medium: Slow Info: Where Libraries, Reading, and Well-Being Converge

- F

Natural Circuitry

And all it does is breathe 
without thought, until
under attack.


(words my own. image from Threadless: Nature vs. Industries: Threadless Guys Pima Tree)

- F

Last Sunday at the Arboretum

Last Sunday, Dan and I visited our favorite place: The Morton Arboretum. With each visit, the Arboretum becomes more of a special place in our hearts. It has been a place for us to be with one another without the distractions of our normal routine closer to the city. It has been a place for us to learn about nature together. To learn about trees, plants, animal life, and culture. It has been a place for us to feel kinship with the animals and trees and strangers. It has been a space for us to be peaceful, to reflect, to talk, to laugh, to walk... it has been our own bit of "Walden" perhaps.

As we entered the grounds that Sunday, birdsong immediately filled our ears with pleasant conversation. We started with a stroll around one of the lakes, Meadow Lake, and a friendly bird chirped with a very unique sound that echoed throughout the Meadow, as if to greet all the passers-by, saying s/he was, like us, happy too.

(I would like to learn more about birds. I have a feeling that I might, if Dan and I continue to seek out nature they way we do now. If we make it a habit. I think we will.)

As we made our way around the lake and further into the land, a squirrel came begging for scraps. It was adorable. It begged as if it were little puppy. This isn't typical of squirrels around our neighborhood, who seem to be so frightened of human interaction and scurry away quickly as soon as our bodies with their shadows and shoes approach. But this Arboretum squirrel was not afraid in the least.

When I dropped a few of my chocolate-chip cookie crumbs, this squirrel didn't hesitate to run up to Dan and I and munch, munch, munch. It was less than a foot away from us; we could have pet it. Maybe next time. But we did name this particular squirrel Gus-Gus.

We continued to walk, coffees in hand, the energizing liquid warming our throats and palms amidst the cool breeze. The sun shined above us, it's light gently warming our faces. The trees, waking up from winter slumber, seemed to yawn pleasantly as they slowly awoke from dormancy, and our quiet footsteps became gentle and unhurried. In the quiet of nature, we calmed ourselves together, and spoke of how thankful we were for this day. 

The flowering trees had already begun to sprout the new buds of flowers and the scent was intoxicating, filling us with some strange promise of renewal. And I realized that I agree with T.S. Eliot. April is indeed the cruelest month, forcing the world to melt and break and to begin growing once again, the warmth gnawing at it's outside, it's shell and skin and fur and bark, after a long winter of resting in the comfort of within. April says, it's time to come out and face the world fully, no hiding. But if April is cruel in this way, it is it's ending, its transition into May, that is sweet. Less cruel, more confident, and steady, steady, steady. 

In the dead of winter of this year, we went to a Forest Therapy Walk. One of the lessons we learned is that every tree has a story. If you study it, just by looking and listening, you could make one up yourself. This time we came upon a particularly interesting tree, which grew up and up and up from the same roots and stump, yet split, early on in its journey upwards, into two different trunks. It's foundation, however, remains one and the same. I might be inspired to write a story about this tree sometime, some comment on solitude and respect, or on the ability for there to be two individual parts of one complete whole. Something connected from its beginning, separated during the middle, only to meet once again at the highest points.

I found a meadow and I wanted to sit it in it, so we did. I like meadows. Illinois has a lot of them, these big expanses of grass. Lots of room for running and reading and sleeping. For sitting and for meeting. 

This museum of trees, this place where trees from all over the world are brought to be saved, to be bred, to be studied, to be taken care of, is not a place free from its inherent wilderness. Actually, since it is a place where the wild knows it can be safe, it becomes a kind of Eden for both plant life and animal life. Deer hide deep in the woods of the Arboretum, turtles thrive in it's lakes and ponds (we saw one large turtle sunbathing on a rock in the middle of the lake, and then a family of about five on another rock, sunbathing as well), squirrels beg for chocolate-chip cookies, birds of all kinds fly over it, fish splash around... and so death must also be a part of its ecosystem.

Dan and I explored the grounds off the regular path (which is allowed) and found a skeleton. A goose, maybe. 

Maybe a wolf killed it over the winter and the body, covered in snow, was never found by the Arboretum scientists. Maybe the birds ate all the meat heartily. I wonder now if anyone will "clean" it up off of the ground. 

When Dan and I explore here, we don't talk as much as we do elsewhere. Our chatter subsides and we are really with each other. We see each other and we feel close. I'm really excited about learning the science of trees and plants and animals here with him. When we can start naming things. When we can start bringing more of it's essence home (which we already do).

The fragrant magnolia tree...! Medicine for our minds.

After a few hours of exploring, Dan urged me to take the Tram Tour. I didn't want to. It was too quiet and calm... but he convinced me and so we did. I didn't regret it one bit. 

We learned about the man who made this amazing place, Joy Morton. The same guy who is the name of Morton Salt! The same man whose father created Arbor Day in the United States. That's the man who created this wonderful space where we will be celebrating our marriage. We learned how huge the place is, we found the library, we saw collections of evergreens and more lakes and collections of different types of flowering trees... we found out that the Arboretum is trying to create spaces that actually recreate what Illinois would have looked like before the colonies. Prairies. Forests. 

More to come. 

- F