Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Home Base

elfinecstasy was asking about bonding with trees. This is what I wrote:


My favorite tree is Home Base. I have known him all my life. His name comes from the fact that we used to play "Hide and Seek" when I was little, and we always used him as Home Base.

He is an ancient mulberry tree near one corner of the house. Like most mulberries, he has lost parts of his trunk and branches over the years. There is one partly rotted stump section extending out from the base, indicating that his girth was once about twice its current (very large) circumference.

Where the branches sprout from the main trunk, there is an old rusted scythe blade buried deep in the wood. When I was very young, the long wooden handle was still attached, and I used it to pull myself up into the branches. Now the handle has long since rotted away, but the blade remains, just the two ends barely visible. My mother says that this is "the one that got away," the tree that not even Death could kill.

A part of my heart will always reside in Home Base. He reminds me of endurance and protection. He is a guardian and an anchor. He taught me that home isn't a place that belongs to you, but a place to which you belong.
Tags: nature, personal
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  • 2 comments
stonetalker

Sycamore

stonetalker

May 20 2008, 16:54:02 UTC 13 years ago

There have been many trees that have accompanied me in my life; the maple tree in the shade of which my father used to grill T-bone steaks, the elm tree at the back of my childhood yarden that finally succumbed to Dutch elm disease around the time of my high school graduation, even the cedar tree we had to remove here at the Keep when Homer was still driving trucks (he couldn't get the truck up the drive; we've chipped a lot of the tree, and used some for firewood -- and I've saved a couple of pieces for ceremonial fires, because Cherokees believe that our ancestors live in the cedar tree and Homer will use anything he can grab for firewood!).

I think the two trees that are most memorable to me though are the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, and the ancient sycamore I befriended in Kentucky.

The Major Oak has connections to Robin Hood. I say 'connections' as it is far younger than the legends of Robin Hood. However, it stands proudly in Sherwood Forest, held up by props under its own weight, probably some four centuries old, or older. The blurb says it is probably a descendant of the 'original' Major Oak. Who knows. I find that kind of hard to swallow. I just know I loved being near that old tree. I loved being in England, and am having a bit of nostalgia homesick bittersweet blues about it all at the moment.

The Sycamore tree was one where I spent many hours -- physical and metaphysical -- with my dearest Medicine Elder. The tree grew on a creek bank, and stretched out over the water. It was haven and home to all sorts of wildlife. We would clamber into its crooked branches and meditate. There were a couple of places where the branches forked 'just so'; he and I could each sit cradled in the arms of this mighty guardian, with our legs entwined, and we would commune with Nature and contemplate our earthwalk for hours.

I miss those days......