Writing in the Stream

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.

-William Blake

Spring happens so fast. Maybe parents are familiar with this, at how fast their babies grow more conscious, and bigger, into toddlers, into kids, into teens, and then adults. But the time scale of spring is ramped up even more, especially when it comes to the emergence of the leaves.

On Friday, I left western Massachusetts, where the trees were still wintery, without leaves, although you could tell something was stirring under the surface by the warmth in the air and the wet sheen of the bark and stems. On Saturday afternoon, the next day, I returned, and already two inch leaves had exploded out of many of the trees, from maple to tulip poplar. I felt both amazed and regretful — how had I missed the emergence of the leaves??

I wanted to slow it down, to fully appreciate just how such big leaves had unfolded. And so, this morning, I looked up some YouTube videos of the process.

Here is one:

And another, where, to anthropomorphize, you can almost feel the plant stretching its stems out like little arms and hands, and yawning, and reveling in its aliveness.

 

And this time the unfurling fiddleheads of a fern:

Fortunately, as it turned out, taking a walk, we were able to locate different leaves in different stages of unfurling on the same tree. So essentially, looking at different parts of the tree was an opportunity to piece together a time lapse of what the unfurling leaves would look like. So we didn’t completely miss the unfurling of the leaves. We just had to be detectives about it.

Bonus: Here is a clip from a documentary about plants that shows what complex almost animal-like behaviors they can sometimes exhibit, as in the case of this parasitic vine choosing a juicy succulent tomato plant over a grass.

Also, check out this amazing invention that uses strobe lighting to mimic slowing down time and reveal a time-scale we don’t usually have access to.

Interview with a Slow Dancer from PLEBIAN DESIGN on Vimeo.

Perhaps instead of a child’s development with the emergence of leaves, a better comparison would be between the emergence of leaves and birth. So much development has already taken place in the womb, or the bud, which explains how such rapid emergence (relatively, I wouldn’t say labor and birth is always rapid — sometimes it must feel like an eternity) is possible.

Addendum:

Consider also William Blake’s further verses:

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeons Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions. A Dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate Predicts the ruin of the State. A Horse misus’d upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood. Each outcry of the hunted Hare A fiber from the Brain does tear.

Which might be interpreted today as a plea for letting children in schools go outside, for animal rights, for justice in national policy (although that’s a problematic comparison, comparing human beings seeking asylum in this country to animals, which is how they are often treated by many of our current policies and institutions). Read this article by Suketu Mehta, on how:

The immigrant armada that is coming to your shores is actually a rescue fleet.

And this interview with Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, and Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Don’t assume you have to go to Yosemite.

-Richard Louv

April 22 is this year’s Earth Day.

Here’s a message from Jane Goodall, an amazing person who loves animals and who has dedicated her life to learning about them, especially chimpanzees, sharing with others what she’s learned, and advocating for them.

This past weekend, a friend shared a special place — a quaking bog, hidden in the forest. My partner and I had decided to walk for several miles to visit her — and what better than to keep walking with her to the place she’d mentioned? We walked along logging roads, and then over the increasingly damp and spongy ground, and finally through some dense shrubs where we almost had to crawl on our hands and knees, out onto a dense tangle of cranberry plants and mosses.

Take a jump, and the whole surface — what had appeared to be solid ground, damp to be sure — slowly rolled, a wave passing underneath our feet. We were walking on top of water, on a dense mat of floating vegetation. We nibbled last year’s cranberries, and looked at the enormous bone (femur?) of a moose that had died there. Already, mosses were growing on the bone’s porous surface. The tiny spaces that had allowed for nerves and blood vessels to pass through, now allowed the tiny roots of plants to gain better purchase. Nearby, pitcher plants grew, capturing water and the occasional insect, blending in with the reddish stems and green leaves of the mosses. We peered inside one pitcher, and tiny larvae twitched inside. Were they immune from being digested by the plant? Or would they be digested alive?

Our friend told us about how pitcher plants growing in areas of excess nitrogen fail to develop into pitchers, because they don’t need the nitrogen. Amazing the ways in which species adapt to changing environments.

This planet is inhabited by such amazing life, and if you’re lucky (which you probably are, if you just realize it, or are willing to make your luck), you don’t have to travel far to find it. Sometimes all it takes is traveling by foot, visiting a friend, and keeping your eyes peeled.

Happy Earth Day! A worthwhile reminder to turn the lights off when you leave the room, to support public transportation, to ride a bike, to walk, and to notice the plants, fungi, and animals that share the neighborhood.