Provoking question: What role do trees play in our life and our world? How do trees inform our sense of place or belonging?
Micro-essay
One day during graduate school I saw women foraging beneath the large trees on the edge of campus. Their hats shaded them from the sun, as they bent repeatedly to pick up—what exactly?—off campus ground. I walked by and wondered.
A few months later my mother-in-law served us chicken and gingko nut soup. The balls were a little bitter, a little “al dente.” But good of course: her food is delicious. As we ate, we discussed the nuts—their health benefits, their taste. She knew it was my first time eating gingko. Then she mentioned that her friends knew where to find Ginkgo Trees all over the area, including my campus. Suddenly, I knew what I had seen. “I saw them!” I told her excitedly, “so they were foraging for ginkgo!” Healing soup eaten on a break from an actively harming environment.
A year ago, I watched as a genocide began to unfold in real time on my phone screen. Seven months later, as I prepared for a teach-in, I came across resources illustrating the connections that Palestinians have with Olive Trees; a kinship connection, a family connection. Trees that have been cared for in kinship with the same human families for generations.
How do trees connect us—as Land, Food, and Spirituality—across vast distances of human-created difference, otherness, and suffering? My mother-in-law fed me healing soup made with love from Gingko Trees like those thriving on a white supremacist campus. My aching heart recognized the depth of Palestinian land rights because of their Olive Tree kinship. Now I live in a place where forest fires rage every summer: the death of beloved friends I have yet to meet, gone forever. What do trees teach us about abundance, care, harm, and healing? Indeed, we can learn much from trees—intellectual and physical harvests. But perhaps we need a relationality that engages not only with our need, but with tree sovereignty. What does the Palestinian Olive Tree—if not killed by settlers uprooting them by hand, poisoning them with chemicals, or burning them down—want? Perhaps its family and a flourishing life. What does the campus Gingko Tree want? Perhaps to feed us. How might (should?) trees impact our relationships, our politics, and indeed, the structures of our lives?
Land
Food
Spirituality