A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

A tree will be your mirror

Day 2: Remote Residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland, 7/18/22 to 8/13/22,  Maria Driscoll McMahon checking in from New York State

Base of a Box Elder (tree), photo taken on Catharine Valley Trail, Montour Falls, NY, Summer 2022

"Trees mirror in many ways the life cycle of human beings: they are born from seed, they breathe and drink, they grow to maturity, reproduce and eventually die from age or disease. Their branches, roots, and the veins of their leaves resemble human blood vessels, and certain species even ooze a reddish, blood-like sap when damaged." from Sacred Trees of Ireland by Christine Zucchelli | Goodreads

In addition to Sacred Trees of Ireland, I've been reading the glorious book, The Overstory, in which the author, Richard Powers, writes with the beauty of a poet and the precision of a scientist. He also does something surprising - he anthropomorphizes trees in a way that is very self-aware and with solid scientific basis. While I have surely always adored trees, I never actually "related" to them past the age of 10 - or, perhaps I should say I never would have felt comfortable relating to them - until reading Overstory.

Imbuing animals, trees, and other natural entities with "human" qualities has been the practice of our species for millennia. Practitioners of spiritual traditions all over the world, past and present (including the Celts), recognize that we have more in common with non-human beings than not. Still, many in the contemporary world who adopt a more detached, scientific view of the world eschew anthropomorphism because it can lead to misinterpretation of animal - or in this case - plant "behaviors." This can be innocuous or it can be dangerous; thinking a bear wants to be friends, for instance, when she just wants her RDA of vitamins and minerals can even be fatal.

However, many more who have no interest in science view animals and plants as inert "objects," because seeing the "human" in the "non-human" can make it much more difficult to regard the natural world as existing almost exclusively for human utility!

It is my hope that A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea serves to assist in rousing feelings of connection with non-human beings. I believe these feelings are innate, but have historically been educated out of us. New scientific research, however, provides confirmation for what many of us intuitively knew even as children: that sentient, sapient, "social" life forms are all around us.

More on this - and, yes, drawings - to come!