MEDICAL ARTS: Introduction to “Like a Tree”

Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD

The seed idea for this book began with the observation that there are “tree people,” and that I am one of them. A tree person has positive feelings for individual trees and an appreciation of trees as a species. A tree person may have been a child who kept treasures in a tree, or had a sanctuary in one, or climbed up to see the wider world, a child for whom trees were places of imaginative play and retreat. A tree person is someone who may have learned about trees in summer camp or through earning a scout badge or was a child who could lose track of time in nearby woods or the backyard. A tree person met up with Nature in childhood or as an adult, and like the four-footed ones who retreat to lick their wounds, may still heal emotional hurts by going to where the trees are. A tree person understands why a young woman might spend over two years in an old growth, ancient redwood, in order to protect it from being cut down. A tree person can become a tree activist at any age.

A huge Monterey pine stood in front of the house that is now my home. I noticed it before I walked down the walk and across the entry deck to enter the house. It never occurred to me that by a vote of a homeowners association this beautiful tree that was here before any houses went up and was in its prime could be cut down because a neighbor wanted it down and could mobilize the necessary votes. In trying to save my tree, I was in many conversations and meetings, and found that there is a world of difference between tree people and “not-tree people.”

I also found that there is a world of information to learn about trees, beginning with why this particular kind of tree thrives on a hillside ridge that often has a morning blanket of fog. Pine needles act as fog condensers that drip moisture down to the ground and, in effect, they water themselves. Tree people like me see the beauty of trees and may have photographed or painted them, but we may have a limited botanical knowledge of them. As I thought about writing this book, I remembered reading the classic novel Moby-Dick, and recalled how information about whales was interspersed throughout the narrative. I wanted to do something similar in this book, and in the process of learning about what a tree is and that they are the oldest living beings on Earth, I acquired a sense of wonder about them.

Rain forests have been called the lungs of the planet. Forests take in prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide, bind the carbon into themselves, and create oxygen, which is then released into the atmosphere we breathe. Each individual tree does this, just as each individual human, just by breathing, produces carbon dioxide, which trees use. We have a reciprocal relationship with trees. Meanwhile, the tropical rain forests and arboreal forests in North America, northern Europe, and Asia are disappearing at an accelerating rate, while the number of humans grows geometrically. Global warming is related to the increase in carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases in the atmosphere, which human produce indirectly through what we use. The more humans there are and the fewer trees there are, the more carbon there will be in the atmosphere and the warmer it will get.

Like a Tree is a title that draws upon the use of the word “like” as simile. There are chapter headings such as “Standing Like a Tree” or “Sacred Like a Tree” that describe similarities between trees, people, and symbols. “Like” is also a verb meaning having some affection for, as in “Do you like this tree?” Tree people can have a range of feelings for individual trees as well as particular species. We relate to trees in ways that not-tree people never do. The polarities of contrast between a tree person and a not-tree person: Joyce Kilmer’s “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree” and the statement attributed to Ronald Reagan, “You see one tree, you’ve seen them all.”

On the day that my Monterey pine was cut down, I was not there to see it happen. I had done all I could do, short of organizing a demonstration to save it. The tree cutters would do the deed when I was away, and with a heavy heart I anticipated the loss on my return. I was in New York City at the United Nations. For years now, I have been going to the United Nations when the Commission on the Status of Women meets in March. Parallel meetings and workshops are held by non-governmental organizations concerned with protecting and empowering women and girls and with women’s rights. The exercise of dominion over women and girls can take many terrible forms: trafficking, female genital mutilation, stoning women, honor-killings, or selling daughters to settle a debt. Closer to home, women and girls are dominated and demeaned through domestic violence, rape, and the sexual abuse of children. Physically and psychologically, when a girl or woman is treated as property, she is ”Like a Tree”--or the dog or horse that can be valued, loved, and treated well or worked, beaten, and sold. These are behaviors and patterns rooted in raising boys to identify with the aggressor and raising girls to learn powerlessness. These are distortions of natural growth. A tree that receives what it needs of sun and rain, healthy soil for its roots, and room to grow becomes a healthy mature tree and a fine specimen. When conditions stunt growth, the result is usually a still-recognizable version of a particular kind of tree. In human beings, unless signs of malnutrition or abuse are visible to the eye, the stunted growth that results from withholding love, nutrition, medical attention, education, and human rights usually manifests as psychological, intellectual, and spiritual stunting, in all concerned.

The tree is a powerful symbol. Trees appear in many creation stories, such as the World Ash or the Garden of Eden. Religions, especially the Druids, have revered trees. Buddha was enlightened sitting under a Bodhi tree. Christmas is celebrated by decorating Christmas trees. There are sacred trees throughout the world. “Family tree” has a symbolic connection to the theme of immortality. Myths and symbols are the carriers of meaning. In them, a situation is presented metaphorically in a language of image, emotion, and symbol. Because human beings share a collective unconscious (C.G. Jung’s psychological explanation) or the Homo sapiens morphic field (Rupert Sheldrake’s biological explanation), a symbol comes from and resonates with the deeper layers of the human psyche.

Like a Tree circles around the subject of tree: the result is a series of views, from many different perspectives. Mythology and archetypal psychology are sources of information about the symbolic meaning of the tree. Botany and biology classify and describe. To learn about trees is to appreciate them as a species. Beliefs about sacred trees and symbols of them have been part of many religions, and turned trees into casualties of religious conflicts. The unintended consequences of cutting down all the trees on Easter Island were disastrous, with applicable parallels to the fate of the planet. In Kenya, the Green Belt Movement engaged rural women to plant trees. When this became known through honoring the founder, Wangari Maathai, thirty million trees had been planted and, in 2004, she became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

As I went deeper and deeper into the subject of trees, I entered a complex and diverse forest of knowledge, from archeological to mystical. I learned that we wouldn’t be here at all--we, the mammals and humans on this planet--if not for trees. Whether huge forests or a single specimen that is one of the oldest living things on Earth, trees continue to be cut down by corporations or individuals motivated by greed or poverty, who are ignorant of or indifferent to the consequences or meaning of what they do. I learned that reforestation was the difference between cultures that stayed in place and thrived, and those that cut down the trees and did not: these are very applicable object lessons for humanity now. It’s possible to learn from past history and see what will befall us or how trees may save us.

I’ve grasped a parallel learning from going to the United Nations when the Commission on the Status of Women meets. Women and girls are a resource. Educate a girl, and she will marry later, have fewer, healthier children, and almost all her earnings will benefit her family. With microcredit loans, women start their own small businesses. When there are enough women in high enough positions, such as in Liberia and Rwanda, the previous culture of corruption and violence disappears. Priorities shift to safety, education, and health. With peace, the economy grows. A convincing case can be made that participation by women is the missing key element in finding solutions for the financial, environmental, and military problems that underlie the instability of our world and the questions of survival or sustainability. Valuing girls is like valuing trees. It’s good for them and for the planet.

There is a proliferation of grassroots activism. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been cropping up all over the world, numbering in the millions, including in China and Russia as well as Africa. Women grow small businesses into larger ones, and have been creating NGOs (80 percent are created by women) with the potential to change collective thinking. Ideas now can spread like a virus, which overcomes resistance to become commonplace. For a tree person who reads my words, whose awareness and concern have not yet extended beyond caring about particular trees, my intention is to take your consciousness deeper, as mine has gone, to involve your heart, mind, and imagination as the first step toward participation in saving trees and girls.

All that was left of my Monterey pine when I came home was the substantial stump; it was broad, irregularly shaped, beautiful in a way, still raw from the cutting and oozing sap. There was also an empty space against the sky where it once towered over my walk.

During the week I was away, when my tree was cut down, I talked to Gloria Steinem about my unsuccessful saga to save my tree. She said, “Remember Jean, you are a writer and a writer can have the last word.” Many trees are cut down to make paper, which is the usual way a tree can become a book. My tree lives on through the words and spirit in this book.

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Dr. Bolen, a Mill Valley psychiatrist, has published almost a dozen books on spirituality, feminism and Jungian analysis. Last year, she published Like a Tree, a scientific and lyrical homage to trees prompted by the loss of a beloved Monterey pine. The introductory section of the book appears below.

Website: www.jeanbolen.com