Last words from Karin Brynard
And suddenly autumn is coming. It is a golden season, writes Karin Brynard, when a single tree can touch your soul and fill you with wonder.
In the middle of an open field, a stone’s throw from my house, there stands a giant oak that I must have photographed a thousand times. It is a lovely tree. Striking, imposing. You might even call it glorious. It flings its branches out in a wide embrace of sky and cloud and wind and whatever else may come. Up high, in its crown, it is a dancer leaping towards the stars.
Standing alone in the middle of an open space has allowed it the luxury of flourishing freely, taking its true place in the world of form.
Come summer it is crowned in splendid green. At its feet it gives shelter from the blistering Boland heat, where many a weary neighbourhood worker will come with their lunchbox, or a beggar finds solace in its merciful shade.
When my husband was still alive, he would pass under the tree on his daily walk to the river with the dogs. And on his way back he would often sit for a while and watch the dogs play in the field. I took so many pictures of him under that enormous tree, gilded in the warm hues of sunset, his gaze fixed on some far off horizon. It was our tree.
On our walks we would often stop to admire it, hand in hand, and regard it in all of its altered states through summer and autumn, winter and spring. Never the same, but still resolutely itself, firmly rooted, standing its ground.
These days, I pass by the tree alone. With the dog. I still pause, still take out my camera. And when autumn arrives, I still linger for longer.
There’s something to a tree in autumn that touches us deeply, perhaps stirring up the murky depths of our collective unconscious. Maybe we’re reminded of our kinship to these tranquil giants, our ancient connection. Were trees not our first home, our maternal cradle before we became human?
As autumn sets in and the oak sheds its emerald crown, imagine a gnarly old man demurely emerging from a lavish gown.
I find this metamorphosis most captivating. It’s as if the tree’s essence is being revealed. And with it our deep affinity to them, our shared experience of life as transient in the midst of the eternal.
English gardeners of yesteryear keenly sensed the vital place of trees in the man-made landscape. Most famous among them was Capability Brown, also known as the Shakespeare of the English garden three centuries ago. He perfected the art of placing a tree as sculpture in the open-spaced parklands of a stately home – think Downton Abbey (or rather the place where it was filmed) and its ancient Lebanon Cedars.
Herman Hesse, the great German Nobel laureate, was so enthralled by trees that he wrote them a lengthy love letter.
“Trees are the penetrating preachers of nature: in their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity… Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree,” he writes. “When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked deathwound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the rings of its years, its scars, its struggles, all the sickness, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. Trees are sanctuaries. Once you have mastered the art of truly listening, you will learn their truth: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, I am life from eternal life… My strength is trust.
I trust that God is in me.”
I’m reminded of Hesse’s profound words when I pass our tree in autumn. The dog ploughs madly into the rustling bed of leaves, cavorting crazily and chasing her tail. I laugh and secretly wish I had the confidence to do the same. I would plunge into those leaves and abandon myself to their prickly touch, to their smell of dust and earth and mulch. Then gaze up at the exquisite calligraphy of the naked branches above.
And I will find peace there at its feet, in silent communion as in prayer, embraced in this healing bliss.
And I will come to rest in the joy of being alive. And of simply being.