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Climbing a Hemlock

TREES

Early on in life I was aware of the trees, the same ones that surround me now as I write from the home where I grew up. I felt the steady presence of their branches looming over the house and their roots under the ground. Unlike the humans who cared for me, they did not rush around. They just grew imperceptibly, sometimes dropped limbs and every year repeated the same cycle of growth, reproduction, letting go and rest. I found peace with the trees in a chaotic household. Now, at this time, I see them as my elders and perhaps my greatest teachers for living peaceably on this earth. The Cherokee believe that plants are our allies and helpers, that they consciously made the choice long ago to help us humans.

ANCESTRY

One way in which I have been shaped is through my DNA and the lives of my ancestors. My more recent known ancestors hail from Northwest Europe. John Howland traveled across the Atlantic to this continent as an indentured servant on the wooden Mayflower boat. Some of my mother’s ancestors came in the 1700s or 1800s from Scotland and Ireland. In 1916 my great-grandparents Jim and Elizabeth drove down from Chicago on their honeymoon and fell in love with the Appalachian Mountains. They bought land on the western side of the continental divide where cold springs flowed year-round and started a family that has stayed here for five generations now. Before settlers arrived here in the late 1700s, this land was territory of the Cherokee, Catawba, Yuchi and Miccosukee. These are the English names for groups of people who still exist and whose ancestors lived here and stewarded this land for many, many generations. My dad was born in England and emigrated to these mountains in the 1970s. The youngest of five siblings, I have one brother who died in 2021, and three sisters who are living. My oldest two siblings were born in England. The next three, including me, were born here in the mountains. In 1979 my parents Will and Susie moved into a log farmhouse near the eastern continental divide, downstream from where Susie was raised. Susie was born and raised on the slope of the mountain at a place known for its cold spring water, now called the Old Sherrills Inn by some and “the big house” by others. She went to Japan when she was 16 as a foreign exchange student, in about 1960, and must have loved it because every year of my life growing up in the log house, Susie hosted foreign exchange students, from all over the world. There were many from Germany, several from France, a few from Japan and Mexico, one from Costa Rica, one from Paraguay, another from Indonesia and perhaps more that are forgotten at the time of this writing. There were also children of neighboring families, alcoholics, teenagers struggling to stay in school, and always cats and dogs. There was rarely a quiet moment. As a child I learned to disconnect by escaping into a book. Inside of a book, in my imagination, I was safe from the chaos of the home. And I escaped to the woods with my sister Elspeth, my friends and often by myself or with a dog. I also competed heartily in all and sundry athletic activities including tree climbing, basketball, trampoline jumping, swimming soccer, deck tennis, capture the flag, hay bale stacking and more.

And now, I am learning about real life beyond words and distinctions and definitions of race, class and gender. This requires being present to his physical body as the vehicle for action and speech. The heartbeat, the sensation of tension in his back and neck muscles, and emotion of fear that lives in my ancestral conditioning. However, this is not my only conditioning. There is also the memory of the many women in his childhood world who looked out for me when my mom was not around, even going so far as to share their breastmilk. And the years of study in massage therapy and body-based practice. And the deep culture of my ancestors that lives through his siblings and cousins, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents and the many more who came before, all the way back to the wise ones who lived as one with spirit and the natural world.