Woolton Woods, Liverpool, England
Woolton Woods At Sunset: Standing In Mystery
It was the walks on which my mother took me that first impressed me from 1944, the year of my birth--through the iron gates that swung on huge sandstone gateposts, into Woolton Woods; and then the soft crunch of wheels and slow feet along the red-gravel path that sounded like a lullaby. The gate; gateposts, red-gravel path--I’m not sure I actually knew them then, or if they naturally attached themselves to my first memories of trees before I had an ego that could separate things, out there in the world, from consciousness, here, in my sacred body.
I was vulnerable then--a tortoise without a shell. It didn’t matter though. Mom and two teenage girls who attached to me took care of everything. Too much sun, wind, rain and the concertina hood of the pram would be raised or lowered; the covers tucked around me along with a smile warmer than the blankets; or the flap on the waterproof coverlet would be raised and clipped in front of my face, blocking the lower third of the raised pram hood; but even at that, I always had an unobstructed view up toward the sky from where I lay supine.
Along that path the last or the first thing I always saw before or after closing my eyes was the canopy of chestnut trees that lined the walk: rich, green, oblong leaves dappled the sky. Still or moved by a breeze, leaf prints patterned my flesh and filled the spaces inside me. It must have been ripening autumn along the same path that the leafless chestnut trees laced the blue or cloud-grey canvass of the sky with the delicate embroidery of twigs and branches. In between the seasons of lush green and barrenness was the magic of falling leaves; but the lacing of the sky as my walks advanced toward winter was the most visceral image, for when I closed my eyes the lacing of branches and twigs stayed with me. My eyelids captured and held it all like butterflies in a net. I can rationalize it all now as the light of day casting shadows on my retina the capillary network in my eyelids; but of course this is objectifying it all from the perspective of a tortoise with its carapace fully formed. Reality itself was different then. The canopy of those chestnut trees were inseparable from me; egoless as I was, it all lived in me, providing beauty, strength and structure, while my innocent radiating energy passing beneath fed the trees no less than their necessity for water, light and minerals.
I’m convinced that culturally there is a primal missing link between infants and trees. For the past quarter century I’ve have the recurring image of swaddled infants hanging in trees like fruit--perhaps the fruit of the tree of life, evocative of Eden. Where on earth did the lullaby, “Rock-a-Bye-Baby”, come from? It’s a beautiful image until the bough breaks and baby falls. I wonder if this fall is the infants’ version of the Edenic Fall, when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge and see themselves objectified for the first time. Just so, the baby’s ego-carapace forms and hardens, forever separating her from the trees, and leaving her lonely inside the illusory safety of the tortoise shell.
About ten years after I began having the images of fruited infants in trees, I came across the beautiful poem by Seamus Heaney, “From the Republic of Conscience”, and knew instantaneously that he and I shared the same images; but he had found a way back--a recovery of the missing link between infants and trees--ritual:
“Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning spells universal good
and parents hang swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.”
As I age, my carapace is softening. I imagine that if I live long enough and continue drawing wisdom from my errors, I’ll become vulnerable enough to find a way back into the canopy of those chestnut trees and live a cycle of seasons in a place from which, in a healthier relationship between humans and their environment, I never should have fallen. My hope is that you mothers, fathers, and grandparents take the time to hang swaddled infants in the tree of life from a bough that will not break in the bitter winds that continue to blow. Secure them until this long winter ends and spring arrives once more.
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