Tree Treasure Hunting and Retreating
On relating to places in new ways, retreating, and more-than-human attention devotion
These “summer” days, I have been delighting in walking or riding my new-to-me e-bike every day to work. This adds infinite joy to my days, I feel better physically and mentally, and it starts my day with so much delight and enchantment.
It has also allowed me to get to know the path that I traverse each day in a different way. I notice different things from the staff shuttle window, from being on foot while talking with a friend, to being on foot alone, to being on the bike.
I have been walking the road once or twice a week since January, and now riding my bike has given me a new relationship to and way of seeing the road. I have to be very aware of where the big potholes are, and have become much more aware of the grade of the hills. I have gotten to know some of the cars and trucks I see regularly, and the people walking, biking, and jogging who have a similar routine. I delight in the walls of monstera, which I also always enjoyed while walking, but which animate differently, take on a different quality, when you are riding by them at a slightly faster speed (but not so fast as in the van, when you might miss them altogether). Something about cresting the hill on the bike in Rodeo to the view of the central valley takes my breath away everytime. It strikes me. There are views that feel even more spectacular, more stunning, on the bike.
Usually when I walk with my friend, we are engrossed in chatting which is therapeutic in its own way. We are both full-time working mothers of small children with very similar joys and struggles. Our bi-weekly walks meet our needs for adult conversation, companionship, empathy, sharing, laughter and exercise, while also sometimes brainstorming about work ideas and collaboration. Mom-life hack: the more needs you can get met doing one thing, the better! Walking has been a game changer for both of us.
And there are things I notice differently when I walk alone. I pay more attention to the path and my surroundings. It makes me think about the many ways we can relate and interact with the places we are in, and how different ways of interacting can lead to new pathways of relating and seeing, new perspectives.
Today I was walking alone, and after a month of searching, I finally found the elder tree, el Guapinol.
For the past month on my walks and rides, I have been in search of this tree. It has been like a tree treasure hunt.
About a month ago, one of my colleagues at the Earth Charter was telling me about a mother tree in the area - an ancient powerful tree, the oldest tree around, with amber below its roots. A magical ancestral tree, holding the history of the place, a tree embedded in deep time.
There are so many majestic trees on the road, which is part of what made it difficult to find - there are so many possibilities, so many trees with deep roots and stories. I had been trying to guess which one it was.
I got some hints.
It’s on the right side of the road coming up the hill. (I would think I had found it and ask again: Is it this one? No…).
It is visible from the road.
It is in private property.
It is closer to Rodeo (not halfway).
It’s branches extend wide from the base, as my other colleague demonstrated with her arms in a dramatic fashion.
I looked and looked and looked. Every day, I was looking for this tree.
And finally - FINALLY! - today, while walking alone, I found it. I noticed it. I became aware of its presence.
I had not noticed this particular tree before. It was inconspicuous, partially obscured by a hedge. Yet today, walking alone, for some reason I stopped at this spot, and suddenly, I was struck: on the other side of this hedge, there it was, and I was sure of it. It called, I am the elder tree.
It was on private property and slightly obscured by the hedge, making it less noticeable, a little undercover, a little hidden, escondido.
El guapinol.
When I got to campus I sent my colleague a message with a photo: I think I found it! Is this it? Yes, that’s the one!
Hello, great elder tree!
El Guapinol, mucho gusto.
Deep bows to you.
I am so glad to know who you are, to meet you,
And look forward to knowing you more.
Now that we have been introduced, I hope to develop a relationship with this beloved elder tree. My friends at the Earth Charter have promised to arrange a visit. For now, I will greet El Guapinol as I pass by, and listen.
Next week, Daphne’s school is closed so I am taking vacation with her (I have tried to bring her to work when her school is closed before, and not a lot of work happens, so I figured I might as well embrace it and use the time to take a break myself!). My top choice for time off would have been a meditation retreat, but since I couldn’t find a retreat nearby with childcare or a children’s program, we are going to….
Spanish immersion school!
Mejorando mi español was on my list of summer goals, so it is not a bad second choice. The school where we are going in Monteverde cloud forest (where I have never been) has a kid’s program, and I can take a private lesson focused on the intricacies and idiosynchrasies of Costa Rican Spanish and improving my Spanish for my work setting, and then we can hang out in the cloud forest together in the afternoons. It is a cloud forest and is mostly primary forest, and I am thrilled at the thought of dwelling among the trees there.
While I can’t make a full retreat happen now, I am going to try to bring as much retreat to this week as I possibly can. This relates to my last post about doing and not doing and how we spend our energy relative to choice, with going on retreat falling in my upper-left quadrant of “would like to do but can’t do now, so how can I make this happen later?” Rather than wait to make it happen later, I am going to see how much I can make it happen even though it will look different.
And you might be asking, “Isn’t taking classes work?” True, and so is entertaining a 5-year old on vacation! So I will get a “break” taking class and she will have fun with other kids and en la tarde we will have fun together.
I was really blessed and fortunate to live near Deer Park Monastery for 7 years. During those 7 years, I learned the importance and power of retreating, and how daily mindfulness and meditation practice can be sustained, nurtured, and deepened by regular periods of focused practice (including deep rest). There is, of course, privilege in being able to go on retreat - to have the resources to go and the ability to get away, the sufficient support to leave behind other responsibilities like work and family obligations. I was lucky to have those conditions during the time I lived there (and also worth noting that retreats at Deer Park are very affordable and often offered on a sliding scale, making it possible in my younger peace professional life to do this).
On all retreats at Deer Park, you spend time doing “working meditation” - anything from tidying the meditation hall to raking to scrubbing bathrooms to chopping veggies - which teaches us that anything can be a mindfulness practice if we give our full mind, heart, and attention to it. And that even work can be restful if we bring this attitude of mindfulness (which, to be clear, is not to negate the need for real, deep rest and not working. This is not a call for McMindfulness and the application of mindfulness to make workers more efficient). The practice of working meditation is good training for bringing retreat energy into whatever you are doing.
When I first started attending retreats at Deer Park, it was always hard to leave. Over time, I learned how to bring more of the spirit of the retreat home with me, and over more time, there was less distance between my life and the retreat setting. They were woven together a little more closely, spilling into one another. There was less separation between life and retreating.
That said, fully retreating, resting, and dwelling in focused practice- especially in community - is irreplaceable. My last retreat at Deer Park was family camp in 2019, before the pandemic. So I found myself asking: while I can’t make a full retreat happen right now, how can I retreat as much as possible given current conditions? Or put another way, how can I work with current conditions to give myself as much of a retreat as possible?
Here are some of my plans for this:
Take a break from social media - I try to take these periodically, a couple of times a year, and I am definitely (over)due. This will free up a lot of space for just being.
Set an email autoresponder - I take immense joy in setting up an autoresponder! I might even set one for my personal email, too (my past few times away from work, I have set an autoresponse for work email but not for my personal one).
Spend as much time as possible not doing. We’ll be in Spanish classes in the morning, but the rest of the day is free. I want to embrace the tech-free time to stare out the window, sit under a tree, stare at the wall…let my mind wander free. We’ll surely do some hiking and excursions, but there is a lovely quality to not having anything planned that feels restful, too. Blank space. (It is hard to convince a 5 year old to do nothing- lol - so we will see how this goes :)
Spend time with the trees. Listen to the trees. Learn from the trees. Be with the trees.
Enjoy not cooking and cleaning. We are staying in an apartment-type room at the immersion school, which isn’t quite like a hotel but also not like being at home. As much as possible, I am going to enjoy trying some local restaurants and not packing school lunches.
These are very small, simple things, which really look like a (mostly) tech break** and being mindful of the open space that break creates. Retreat field notes to follow, I am sure :)
How might you bring some retreating into your life, even if you can’t fully retreat?
**mostly because there could be an Enchantable post in there somewhere, and definitely some writing :)
A practice I learned from Sophie Strand during a workshop at the Re-imagining Education Conference a few years ago was to choose a more-than-human entity/being to focus on being in relationship with and learning from over a lunar cycle. Lately, I have been finding this happen almost organically, emergently. This past month I have been enamorada/obsessing over the monstera everywhere, especially on my morning walk/rides. Today, on the tail of this full moon in Capricorn, I devote my attention and relationship to the great mother Guapinol - and also being open to the beings I will meet on my trip to Monteverde.
What/who has been capturing your attention that you could devote some more focused attention to for this lunar cycle? If you try it as a practice, let me know how it goes :)
This is my 20th Enchantable post, so I am celebrating that today! Thank you for being with me on this journey of sharing more of my writing and heart into the world :)
Love,
Stephanie
P.S. While I am retreating and immersing in Spanish learning and the cloud forest, I plan on reading (or at least starting) Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.
What are you reading this “summer”?
