Field Notes: May 10–22, 2018
Ed is 500, give or take. I am quiet approaching Ed, suddenly overcome by its size, its being, the lush scene I’ve entered. I think I should ask him, or her, it could be Edyta, after all,
do you mind? if I climb you?
I get in my harness. I understand now, after a tutorial, that this will be more like shimmying up the air next to Ed. Right next to her. I confess: at first I thought, well, it will be a tree, all the way up, some nice exercise, there’s really no surprise in a tree, just a lot of beauty. And that will be nice.
but no, you can’t imagine—
I shimmied up, shimmy shimmy, rest. I am doing a kind of work, a kind of research, I guess. Good research is world-making. World-leaving. Pull, shimmy, rest. I leaned in. I climbed out of the Holocene, I left my apartment, I hovered above Chicago, I pulled myself out of the tunnel between the Red Line and the Blue Line where it has always stunk like hot sugar and feet. I climbed out of the iconic beams and lines of a 20th Century city and breathed, dangling in a smell of Fir, an air of cedar. I rested, and realized that I left a few things on the ground. I am suddenly in Oregon. Shimmy, shimmy rest. I had been in my city, then I was on a plane, now I am in a tree. What am I doing?
Maybe a third of the way up, I touched the bark. This bark was here when Spinoza was grinding lenses. I was not. This bark was here when Descartes cursed Queen Christine of Sweden for making him wake up so early. I was not. I am now. Here. This place existed. You can be in it, this was that world.
obviously— I told myself, shimmying.
A little higher up, I begin to think, how is this not the top? Even higher still, I touch a nodule, a branch-snag. I think, if I were a bird I would perch here. I feel the end of it with my fingers. For a moment I want to kiss it. I feel a bit like someone has a crush on someone. I think I am laughing at my thinking, or, my heart is racing. I look again, catching my breath, and the wind gives my ropes a little shove.
There was a day, of course, when there was a flourishing branch here, whole cohorts of needles recruiting and greening in the rain. The branch may have been here on a spring morning in the mid-19th Century, when a poet took out a blank sheet of paper, and confirmed:
I am alive — I guess —
The Branches on my Hand
Are full of Morning Glory —
And at my finger’s end —
It will amaze you to know I was only half way up. I shimmied faster. Finally, triceps weary in a good way, smile unfaded, I made it. Near the top of Ed, was Sara. I rested, dangling, thinking of Emily Dickinson’s poem, thinking of nothing, hearing a sound of air moving in a way that was new. How long can I stay? I asked them.
Looking down, like looking on clear, deep water. I’ll need wings, I’ll need to get to know this place. From here it becomes clear that there is a quality of brightness below us. Even the levels below have their own light, their own green, their own temperature. These depths— I can see now that there is a world up here. The ground is only one kind of world. Worlds within worlds. Time travel. The old-growth forest makes both possible. Rather, it is only possible to be in the forest by traveling worlds, traveling time. Now I can see it.
I touch the bark of the tree before I descend, (me: winged, new). 500 years! While my fingertips still trace the bark that was once a sapling, I am being touched, barely young.
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