Footnotes to a Conversation, November 7, 2022

I have two items to share with you this week. I hope they will set your mind free to wander, to dream of what might be, to indulge in fantasy and imagination.

The Tree as Avant-Garde Art

One of the things I remember best from childhood visits to Victoria was the monkey puzzle tree in a garden near where we were staying. They are such uncanny trees, bearing little or no resemblance to pines or maples or oaks. Native to Chile, they grow in a thin band along the Andean mountains and valleys between Chile and Peru. They’re a sacred tree for the Mapuche people, providing nuts as food, bark for medicine, and signposts to guide their way. One of Captain George Vancouver’s officers was a naturalist. When he was served nuts from the pehuén tree while their ship was docked in the port of Valparaiso, he slipped them in his pocket rather than eating them and the first monkey puzzle tree off its native soil was grown in London’s Kew Garden, from where it spread around the world once more. A fascinating tale which leads to a botanical garden at the northern tip of Vancouver Island – but I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself. Or you can follow the tree back in time 2.5 million years for it is one of only a handful of living fossils. [The Tyee]

Dreamings

I deal with facts day in and day out – facts about nature and the environment, facts about trucking and accounting. My writing is factual, aimed at informing and problem-solving. Sometimes I long for a little fiction and fantasy, for moments when magic supersedes reality. That’s when I turn to art and poetry.

I hesitated before purchasing The Unwinding: and other dreamings by Jackie Morris, but I had a gift certificate so why not use it? I knew Jackie Morris’ work as she co-authored The Lost Spells and her images of wild creatures are breath-taking. Morris describes The Unwinding as “a book for dreamers. Slight of word, rich of image, its purpose is to ease the soul … The Unwinding is an invitation to shape-shift. It leaves space for the reader’s imagination.” Some of the stories set my imagination free with wonderful daydreams for days to follow – riding the skies on a bright blue fish, attending the wedding of two foxes accompanied by hares with butterfly wings, and a caravan library of lost dreams and half-imagined things. I hold close the final words in the book:

“Rest now, in the peace of the wild things. May the swan be your pillow, may the gold owl bring you visions. May the red fox gift you cunning, and the wolf bring you courage. And may the white horse lend her strength to all your days.” (surely a deliberate reference to The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry)

Footnotes to a Conversation is a weekly Monday feature covering an assortment of topics that I’ve come across in the preceding week – books, art, travel, food, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I also post occasional articles on other dates, including frequent book reviews and travel tales.

If you share my love of nature, check out EcoFriendly West, an online publication encouraging environmental initiatives in Western Canada, and Nature Companion, a free nature app for Canada’s four western provinces.