land and tree a part of us

Cataloochee Symbiosis

deep in a secluded valley in the Smokies
lived a man who knew the land and the trees as part of him,

the trail to his homeplace
slips up the hollows
and along the flat ridges
as if each were made for the other,

 I imagine his making of the sled road
as being as much a work of art and love
as a work of muscle and sweat,

along the trail he invited old growth hemlock, poplar, and pine
to stay, any place where corn fields didn’t demand they leave,
the body and the soul balanced in their need to be fed,

and now, after the dream of a farm here has faded away,
many great trees still stand,
 
 they have endured and can speak to us
 

of when the Cherokee slipped through this valley on hunts,
of the time before people had the power within their hands
to break the spirit of the land so that we can ride it
and feel it was then ours,

not much old growth is left
and it’s hard to get to where it hides,
particularly here in the East
where our numbers can overwhelm what’s left,

this old valley is secluded enough
for elk to be reintroduced here
and some old growth to remain,
it’s not secluded enough for a contagion from overseas to miss it,
such as when, generations ago, the chestnuts were blighted,
and now an insect, an adelgid, swarms in to devastate the great hemlocks,
who still pillar like great columns, now ghosted with shrouds of lichen,

I hope we humans can learn to do better than the adelgid does now, here,

symbiosis should be our goal,
like in our gut,
where count less bacteria live within us,
and we are one together,

that’s how Robert Palmer seemed to live with land and tree,
may we learn how to harmonize, too.

by Henry Walker
July 23, ’12