Breathing Amongst the Trees

It’s been nearly five months since Washington State issued ‘stay at home’ orders. While I miss sipping an Old Fashioned at one of my favorite watering holes, what I miss most are trees. Not the ones in my backyard, or my neighbor’s yard, or the ones lining the city streets. I’m talking about grand congregations of trees. I’m talking about FORESTS - otherworldly, magical, peaceful. I have always loved being in the natural world. Since I was a kid, my feet were more often tethered to soil than concrete.

During this quarantine, I’ve thought a lot about nature and trees. Below is an ode to the wilds - albeit small - that were easily accessed through my childhood backyard in Hamden, Connecticut. I am forever grateful for the seed that my backyard woods planted in the center of my soul, a seed that’s germinated within me for all these many years. I will continue to water it with enthusiasm, wonder and respect.

When we weren’t eating or sleeping, or suffering through any of the other myriad obligations thrust upon us by our parents, we were in the woods.  It was our land, our territory, where we made the rules.  Here we could be invisible or fly.  Here we could be super-heroes or villains.  Here we could curse and gamble and smoke the cigarette snatched from a mother’s purse.  Time, too, abided by different rules in the woods, moving at both a glacial and exponential pace simultaneously.  Here, ‘forever’ was more than a word.

As we entered the woods, shadows swallowed the sunlight and the temperature dipped by ten degrees, at least.  And it was silent - no bird song, not even the soft flutter of wings.  The only sound was our feet on the path, a path we forged, its dirt hardened by our endless pursuit of new adventures.  There was a fork in the path at which sat the Grandfather Tree.  Gnarled, leafless and gray, he’d nod in welcome, his sapless branches creaking like dried bones.  We’d bow in kind before turning right, darting past the Snake Pit towards the Swamp where we’d hunt for Jack-in-the-Pulpits amongst the skunk cabbage, our sneakers sloshing through gooey mud, our mothers’ consternation be damned.  On other days, we’d head left to scramble up the Jungle Vines.  Rumor had it you could see all the way to New York City if you climbed high enough.  We never saw farther than State Street.

Nestled along the southern border of our suburban New Haven neighborhood, the woods were a deciduous mix of maple, hemlock and oak a century old.  Each season brought rituals we honored with religious fervor.  In summer we’d build forts which we disassembled every fall to protect the lumber from the ravages of inclement New England weather.  In winter we’d pursue tracks in the snow, debating whether they were a squirrel, rabbit or cat.  And in spring, we’d eagerly await summer’s return so we could catch fireflies, their tiny luminescent bellies blinking like fairies in the trees.

Then the ties appeared - thin, plastic, blue.  We discovered them after school, interspersed among the burgeoning vernal leaves like voracious caterpillars.  They were spaced every six feet or so, marking a crude line through the woods.  We pinched them, trying to derive their meaning with our fingertips.  A fence was erected the following week, slicing our woods in half.

We stood shoulder-to-shoulder, clutching the chainlink, our knuckles white, glaring not at the faceless enemy our parents described only as a “construction company”, but at the Snake Pit and the Swamp, and all the beautiful trees in between we couldn’t protect.  Later that night, alone in our beds, wide-eyed and furious, we berated ourselves for being blind to the possibility our woods could be destroyed.

The bulldozers roared, the crack-crack-cracking of snapped trunks unbearable.  We raced our bikes to the other side of town, to the ball-field behind our elementary school with its enduring dimensions of 60 feet from base-to-base.  We’d heard the field at the junior high - which we’d all be attending the following year - was bigger, more on par with those of the major leagues; stealing a base was going to be far more difficult.  Between the pitcher’s mound and home plate, we lay strewn in the tender grass, surreptitiously wiping our cheeks until early evening when we knew the damage was done. 

On our way home, we stopped at the fence and stared at the freshly-turned soil flattened by heavy machinery, surprised at how small the now-empty lot actually was.

We tried resuming our old habits, bowing to the Grandfather Tree who didn’t welcome us as warmly as he had before.  Maybe he felt guilty for surviving the saw.  Time, too, had changed.  We could hear its ticking, as if a giant clock hovered over us, insisting listen, listen.  And since the right side of the fork had been severed by the fence, there was really no fork at all anymore, just a single path turning left, the only path for us to take. 

God Damn Independent

When I was a college freshman, my new friend Jessica – who I had met in our dorm laundry room while guzzling can after can of Jolt – asked if I intended to pledge a sorority.  This was the University of Arizona, where 17% of the student body belongs to any one of the 53 campus fraternities or sororities.  Jessica had her own eye on Pi Beta Phi, known for its towering, golden trove of strikingly pretty girls from big city families with disposable incomes.  It was not uncommon to see a convertible BMW or two parked in front of their majestic plantation-style home replete with Doric columns and sprawling front lawn.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Jessica cocked her head and squinted with lips puckered as if scrutinizing an insufferable algebraic equation.  “You’re a GDI”, she said, her tone dripping with indictment.

I felt dirty without knowing why. “What’s a GDI?”

“God-Damn Independent.”

I smiled, relieved. “Why, yes - I guess I am.”

‘GDI’ is a term used by fraternities and sororities to describe those uninterested in joining the Greek system.  While the word ‘independent’ is usually held in high regard, especially in American society with its independence-rich mythologies, the descriptor ‘God-Damn’ knocks ‘independent’ squarely off its lofty pedestal, to be spoken of only in whispers, like ‘divorce’ or ‘cancer’.   

Social connection is integral to the human condition.  It’s in our DNA.  From the time we’re born, when the world is fuzzy and shapeless to our neonatal eyes, we recognize our mother’s scent as our own, and we cling to her tightly.  Our very survival depends on it.  Throughout our lives, we continue seeking ourselves in others – be it through a shared proximity, physical trait or ethnicity, a common language, hobby or career – forming bonds that have lasting effects on how we see ourselves and the world around us.  

Henri Tajfel’s “Social Identity Theory” claims a person’s sense of who they are is based on their group affiliation.  We develop pride and self-esteem from ‘belonging’.  To keep these good feelings flowing, we boost the group’s standing by cheering its attributes – by boosting the group, we boost ourselves.

At no time are groups more heavily demarcated than in high school.  There are the jocks and the beauty queens, the brainiacs and theatre geeks, the stoners, the loners, the punks.  Each group stakes claim to their chosen territories, drawing invisible boundaries in the cafeteria, the library, the classroom.  And rarely are these lines crossed.  But what happens when you’re an athletically-inclined, guitar-slinging, science-loving, book fanatic with a penchant for racket sports, medieval history and Depeche Mode?  When pieces of yourself exist in several groups – where do you belong?

From the time I was a child, my interests reached like eager tentacles in many directions.  My brain was (and still is) a hungry creature.  This didn’t matter so much when my social network lived within a six-block radius of my home, when I’d just as well build a tree fort with the nerd next door as I would the delinquent.  But most of us outgrow our neighborhood to wander beyond its comforting familiarity in an adolescent stupor of hormone-infused anxiety and confusion.  So we seek safety in numbers, just as our evolutionary forebears did when saber-tooth tigers lurked in the grasslands and lightning threatened to strike at any stormy moment from above. 

Basically, we begin to form tribes.

Social Identity Theory describes three stages of group development.  The first is ‘categorization’.  We humans like to organize things.  It helps us understand the world a bit better.  This is particularly important in a social context.  When we place individuals in a group, there are expectations we have for members of that group.  Jocks are good at sports; nerds not so much.  The next stage is ‘social identification’, where we adopt the identity of the group to which we belong, including its norms, behaviors and traits.  By doing this, we are categorizing ourselves.  The third and last stage is ‘social comparison’, when we decide that our group is the ‘in-group’, and everyone else be (God-)damned.

My wife tells the story of her friend Mike who, as a kid, was skilled at soccer.  In his early twenties, he became enamored with the rockabilly scene, dressing the part with conviction:  slicked back hair, vintage denims and tight white t-shirt, the sleeves rolled back to reveal a colorful spread of ink from shoulder to wrist.  My wife was in an intramural softball league and when her team was short a few members, she reached out to Mike, thinking his soccer abilities would translate easily through a bat.  He adamantly shook his head.  “I don’t play sports anymore,” he scoffed.  Not because he didn’t want to, but because it was something a rockabilly dude just didn’t do.

When you’re a child, the world if full of possibilities.  YOU are full of possibilities.  You’re told you can do anything or be anything.  You believe one day you will wriggle your toes through the moon’s sandy soil and perform life-saving brain surgery blindfolded and win the Olympic gold medal in fencing with one hand tied behind your back.  And, and, and.  But then we get older, the possibilities narrowing as we’re categorized with pin-point perfection by our parents, teachers and peers who encourage certain qualities while discouraging others.  Slowly, the myriad forks in our young life’s road become the dumping ground for others’ values and expectations, leaving us with fewer paths forward.

Why can’t the football hero also dance ballet?  Why can’t the headbanger also appreciate a violin concerto every so often?  Why can’t the rockabilly dude swing a baseball bat from time to time?

I was extremely lucky to have parents who supported my varied interests, the most dominant being music.  We had an organ in our living room when I was growing up.  I spent hours with my fingers dancing across the silent keys as I pretended to play, singing along to Beatles records.  When I was eight years old, my parents asked if I wanted to play an instrument.  “Yes – the drums”.  To which they replied, “And your second choice?”  I began guitar lessons, eventually joining a band aptly called the Iconoclasts when I was fifteen.  Our first (and only) gig was at New Haven University – all my band mates being college-aged.  And although I was much younger, a girl who played electric guitar was a rare and desirable commodity.  At the end of the day, age didn’t matter.  We all shared the same passion and joy.  

I had found a tribe.  

But this was just one of many tribes I’ve belonged to over the years, each representing a piece of myself.  Tajfel’s theory notes that most individuals belong to multiple groups – say you’re a Jewish woman who works as a radiologist in Manhattan.  You are a member of several groups defined by your gender, ethnicity, profession and hometown.  These distinct circles have very little overlap or contradiction.  The challenge seems to arise when you’re a member of groups that don’t see eye-to-eye.

Tribalism is a hot topic these days.  It’s often associated with blind loyalty and simplistic black-and-white thinking.  You’re a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or a liberal, a socialist or a capitalist, a climate change believer or denier.  You stand in line on opening night of the next Marvel movie, or you thumb your nose at those who do.  You listen to bluegrass but not hip-hop, or like sci-fi novels but wouldn’t crack a page of Jane Austen.  You’re a supporter of black lives, but not police lives, because word on the street is you can’t be both. 

I travelled to Iceland for the first time in late summer 2017.  My wife, sister and I cruised along the Ring Road from the Snaefellsnes Peninsula along the mid-west coast to Hofn, a small town in the southeast.  I had never seen such geological diversity – misty, rainbow-tinged waterfalls slicing through lush, green expanse; columnar basalt cliffs rising like sentinels above silty black sand beaches; snow-capped glacial ice swallowing the rigid peaks of rust-colored mountains; and rocky detritus from past volcanic eruptions scattered across barren valleys, creating a terrain truly akin to Mars.  All in an eight-hour drive.

In spite of these breakneck topographical changes, from steaming hot geysers to frigid rivers, there was no point during our trip when we turned to each other to ask, “Where the hell are we?”  Because we recognized these seeming contradictions – all of them – as part of Iceland.   And it’s this very multiplicity that attracts more than two million visitors each year.  It is the “Land of Fire and Ice”, after all.

Why don’t we readily accept the same varied interior landscapes within people, including ourselves? 

My wife and I are both musicians.  For most of our adult lives, we’ve also held day jobs in more traditional, white-collar careers.  When hanging out with our musical community, we don’t talk about work.  Similarly, when we’re amongst work colleagues, we don’t talk about music.  It’s not an avoidance, but rather a natural conversational flow towards the interests of those engaged in the dialogue at hand.  In the early 2000s, rents were rising in Seattle and my wife and I decided we no longer wanted to pay someone else’s mortgage.  When we shared the news that we’d be moving out of our apartment and into our very first home, we received an interesting mix of responses.  While our work colleagues were supportive and happy for us, there were a few in our artistic circle that looked at us differently, as if we had suddenly shifted from the ‘in-group’ to the ‘out-group’, committing an act that violated the rules of our tribe. 

For a short while I questioned my own identity – who was I?  The woman who gets lost in happiness as my fingers traipse along my bass strings, the back of my neck tingling when a new song suddenly gels between band members (one of which is my wife)? Or the biotechnology data expert who feels an incredible sense of pride in being directly involved in an FDA drug approval that will benefit patients’ lives? 

Then I remembered - I’m a GDI.

I think the Greek system has it wrong.  GDI’s aren’t lone wolves sneering from the shadows of their preferred isolation, to be both pitied and loathed. They’re the football player who dances ballet.  They’re the rockabilly dude who plays soccer.  They’re the bass-wielding foot-stomper who recognizes a well-designed clinical trial when she sees one.  In short, GDIs are part of many tribes.  We dip in and dive through numerous social circles that introduce us to many ways of thinking, many ways of viewing the world, many ways of being.

If we did live in isolation, like the wolf or the saber-toothed tiger, we would avoid interminable questions about who we are and which groups suit us.  But we would be lonely.  And we might miss the opportunity to be our best selves, because every interaction with another human is a mirror, and the more mirrors we peer into, the more we learn.  And in these mirrors we might see that both fire and ice co-exist within us.  And that’s okay.  In fact, it’s simply beautiful.

My wife, sister and I at Thingvellir National Park, Iceland