Breathing Branches
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I loved a certain way – without effort – without otherwise – and I cannot go back. Simple truths glimmer like the kiss of light on unspoiled snow.
After a sluggish dawn, a few orange beams manage to find a way through barely breathing branches. In Kenya, I had a favorite tree. In fact, I had two favorite trees, but one elicited an experience – a transcendence of beauty and simplicity and just . . . I don't know . . . wild love.
We lived in the tea fields high above Nairobi. Every day driving the kids to school we would descend from around 7,800 ft to about 5,500 ft above sea level. The views in the highlands were always impressive; always moving. Coming around one particular curve, a huge expanse would open on the left side to reveal a lone acacia, perfectly formed, standing rigid against miles and miles of uncultivated African land. It was the quintessential Kenyan backdrop, like a scene from a Disney movie or a postcard from safari.
The tree on its own was perfection. However maybe it was the fact that this tree was something I could count on during a chaotic and sometimes terrifying time spent in Kenya that left an indelible cross on heart. The tree was there every day, a gatekeeper to an indescribable view. It was a reminder of all the things that were there before I arrived and all the things that will be there after I've left. The tree didn't wave like other trees and although it provided some shade, its sparse leaves and thorny branches did not typically call out to me as a nourishing place in that way. I would come to learn during my years of living there that the tree in Kenyan culture was used as a symbol of peace in many traditions. For me, this acacia tree became that: my peace – a daily reminder to look outside of myself and simply be.
Trees matter – for fuel and shelter and literally, life. And in this case, a single tree set the world back in order . . . in the middle of carjackings, post-election violence, a tsunami of inter-displaced peoples . . . hungry, cold and afraid. A single tree grounded my language missteps and my inability to keep my family safe at all times. In the midst of revolution and poverty and the inability to know if I was safe, there was stunning beauty. And wild forgiveness. And incomprehensible generosity.
And this acacia tree stood there as a witness. It breathed tear gas on one day and bore the sharp dazzle of the equator's rising sun the next. It held the incense of decades of wood smoke and it filtered the dust of donkeys, white SUV's and matatus racing towards Banana Hill. I passed this tree twice a day, every day for four years and the sight of it always shook something loose.
When I remember Kenya, my heart still bleeds over everywhere, unto everything. It's hard to write about that time. But as I sit here so far from that place, staring out into Michigan's wintered pines, I find it easier to recall the acacia I loved.
There are one hundred ways to fall asleep and one hundred ways to wake. There is depression and disease and there is sunlight cleaving old barn rafters. There is Trump and MLK and winter and spring. And yet, if allowed, there is a love, always a conduit throughout time, grounding us by setting us free.
acacia – pine – maple
there is a meeting
in the ground