I had another version of a recurring dream last night where I was trying to get somewhere, but nothing was working, nothing was going according to plan. And of course, the harder I tried, the worse the chaos and obstacles became. I woke up terribly frustrated and disoriented.
Then that same morning, as I was taking a stroll around my gardens, I found myself over the hill in the woods, where a plethora of new, young oriental bittersweet vines—more than ever before—are already very aggressively growing, twirling around young saplings and reaching for the branches of the larger trees. And they were using the jumbled mess of newly fallen trees that had been killed by vines years before, to help them reach new trees to climb. I could also see my beloved hemlocks struggling, putting out an admirable amount of new growth in spite of the woolly adelgid infestation that has plagued them for years, and I wondered how much longer they could withstand the onslaught.
If the deer liked the taste of the bittersweet vine, there would be more balance, but they don’t. The deer themselves are overgrown—there are too many of them for this small, wooded area—so they eat most of the vegetation. There are no spring wildflowers and very few young trees in this little wood. It is definitely a place out of balance, as is so much else in our world these days.
Standing there among the vines and trees, I felt frustrated and agitated just like in my dream. The desire to “fix it,” to make it better, felt almost overwhelming, especially since this was land I lived on and felt responsible for. Would it be better to make the effort to clear these vines once again and help save the remaining trees, or should I let nature take its course? It was clear that anything I did would only be a temporary reprieve.
I wrote my first blog, It Starts Here, about these vines and this forest in the summer of 2000. The vines were as big as my arm and full of lovely bright yellow-orange berries—and their seeds that are still sprouting all over my yard six years later. I wrote about my anger with them for taking over and killing the trees. And how I also realized they were the invitation that drew me into the woods in the first place—and how I was actually grateful for them.
Now here I am again, wanting to groom this little forest enclave to my vision of balance, but facing the reality that I really can’t. Not in the long run. It would be easiest to rail against these foreign invaders, both the oriental bittersweet and woolly adelgid that come from East Asia, blaming them for the imbalances. To join the vast chorus of people trying to eradicate all the beings we have labeled as invasive species. But it is important to remember that we humans were the ones who brought them here in the first place, initiating rapid changes in our environments that we can’t control.
Living in a natural world that is changing too fast for normal evolutionary relationships and balances to develop is hard. It is heartbreaking, frustrating, and unbelievably challenging. Rapid change is happening to our environments, even though we move through the world at such a brisk pace, we do not like rapid change. We much prefer our lives, our ecosystems, to remain like they “always have,” meaning that we want them to stay like the worlds that we recognize from our childhood and from stories handed down from our parents and grandparents. This is what makes us feel safe and comfortable—and that is important.
In fact, the Earth has been, until recently, remarkably stable for almost 12,000 years. This period began after the last major ice age ended and allowed our human civilizations to dramatically expand. We have naturally become very attached to these stable climates that have given rise to all the life we love, and how they grow the plants that sustain us in the ways we expect them to.
Now, in the last fifty years or so especially, changes have begun to happen so quickly that we can see the effects for ourselves in a single lifetime, causing us to experience tangible grief and fear. In our naturally human-centered world view, we think in terms of decades and even centuries—time frames that fit our own life cycles.
But the natural world operates in much vaster spans of time. What if the oriental bittersweet and the woolly adelgid—these and so many other “invasive” plants and bugs—are part of the Earth’s plan for how they will manage these rapid climate changes? What if the Earth is already responding to these changes far ahead of our own thinking, knowing that vast changes are coming once again?
I am comforted in one way, with a strong sense that the Earth will be fine—our Great Mother Earth will always generate new life. Yet, my grief in knowing we are losing the worlds that generations of our ancestors knew and loved is overwhelming when I allow myself to think about it. It is scary to contemplate how all that we depend on for our food and shelter might be radically changing over the coming decades. And so, I usually don’t. I may even delude myself occasionally into thinking that since I am in the later years of my own life it won’t affect me. But of course, it will, because my life is bound to the lives of my children, all the descendants of those beings currently living, and the worlds we will all be born into again and again.
And so, here I am standing on the edge of these dying woods at the edge of my yard, wondering what to do. When I wrote that first essay six years ago, I heard the message, “Heal the land. This land. It matters,” and I thought it meant to start by clearing the vines and stewarding the land in the traditional sense of the word. Today though, I am realizing my desperate desire to fix the forest was, in part, my attempt to escape the grief of losing it. Perhaps I can’t control what is happening to it, or fix it, or “make it work.” But I can love it, grieve with it, care for it, soothe its wounds, and simply be alive with this precious piece of land. And that might be the most healing of all—for both of us. The worst thing I could do would be to turn my back because I don’t like what is happening to it right now.
Oriental bittersweet and their beautiful orange berries shared this wisdom when I sat with them at the end of last season, but I had not fully digested their wisdom until now. They said, “Allow us to help you trust that a new balance will come. A new equilibrium often takes longer to achieve than the span of a single lifetime. Let us help you sit with your discomfort. Remember that new life always arises from the ruins of the old. For now, trust that each curve of our vines holds our desire to create new life from the dirt that holds us both.”
Today, loving this little backyard wood means that I will, without being vengeful or obsessive, pull some vines from a few saplings, cut a few dead limbs that have fallen down on the living trees, and resurrect my old sit-spot so I can spend more time here again, giving this land my attention and love.
This land is asking to be treated as we would treat any loved one, to be cared for as I cared for my own mother as she lay dying. I made her more comfortable, took care of her immediate needs, and loved her deeply. But I knew it was her time to go. I cannot heal this little forest in the short term. I do not know how, when or even if, it will become fecund and fertile once again. But I can love it as I would any being whose time to return to the Earth has come.
I have learned that my desire to fix things can sometimes be my way of making myself feel better, so I can avoid the grief that comes when I realize a being, a land, or a situation is changing or dying, even if it is part of a natural life cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Supporting beings that can and should be helped is wonderful work. But the message I am receiving today from this land and these vines is the strength to discern the difference between when to help a being to live and when to help them in their dying. When to fix, and when to let go. Both require our love.
In my dream, I clearly needed to quit pushing, but in the relentless way of dreaming, I couldn’t. What a revelation it is to know that the trust I need to let go begins with love—that loving can fill my urge to be doing and fixing. Right now, sitting with this dying forest and offering love is all I can do, and trust that life will return in its own time, however long that may take. When I forget this, my frustrating dreams always return.
