Seasons of Resurrection

The vernal equinox is one of two moments in the year when day and night hold hands for a moment as equals. In Christian communities, it is the season of Lent, a time of somber introspection meant to remind people of their mortality and to prepare for the joy of Easter.

The idea of physical, bodily resurrection is a topic theologians differ on. My interest lies more with the word itself: resurrection. Not as a religious concept, but rather as events to witness every day. The sun angle rises and various species of willow brighten with red and yellow and rich golden bronze.

I spent a 50-degree afternoon in my garden recently, picking at the flowerbeds with a rake, lifting the leaves that have laid over them all winter, to find the green tucked in beneath. Blue flax, penstemon, yarrow, a couple of species of aster, and the weedy black medic that I can only hope to control, rather than eradicate, all rewarded my search. The local mule deer band was glad to find them too.

Above the ground-hugging green of rebirth, aspen catkins are showing off their incipient nubbins of white. Flies drift around the trunks, the first insects of the year. Butterflies are surely abroad somewhere on these warm afternoons, especially the showy Milbert’s tortoiseshell which is always the first one I see. These insects and many others over-winter as adults, an ability I find to be amazing for such small and fragile creatures. Along with the butterflies, bears are rising from their dens. All of them are potent reminders of the reality of resurrection.

While I’m gratified to witness the gathering outburst of life in springtime, I continue to wrestle with the religious traditions at this time of year. I’ll pick on Christianity since it’s the only one I can claim to know something about. I remember squirming in the hard wooden pew as a child, facing discipline from my mother if I became disruptive, while the priest droned away in Latin. If I prayed at all, it was for Mass to mercifully be over.

The tenets of the faith became less opaque as I grew older, but my focus faded in and out for years as I sought something that felt authentic and appropriate to the times. To me, Christianity, along with most other world religions, seemed a relic from another time, place and culture. My religion was the wild, and old-growth forests my cathedrals.

While I found nothing to criticize in the words and acts of Jesus, the history of the church itself was a different matter. Over the years, I became aware of the shameful chapters that had never been mentioned in the sermons and catechism classes of my youth: the 1493 “Doctrine of Discovery” and various pogroms and purges of heretics that ended, in abhorrent cruelty, the lives of people we now call saints.

At a more fundamental level, here is the question I ask of faiths that claim to be based on love: Why does it have to be solely about humans? What does the book of Genesis mean when it says that all the creatures of land and sea are good, while humanity alone is considered “very good?” Don’t other creatures have the same spark of a divine spirit that gives them life, as it does us? Don’t they deserve decent treatment, at a minimum, if not actual love?

From what I can tell, we humans are the only species capable of intentional cruelty and evil, so we have needed religion with its strictures and threats of eternal punishment to behave properly. In the Christian context, believing and behaving properly—which has multiple interpretations depending on the sect—will allow us to be resurrected. Again, some see this promise literally, others as a metaphor. I have no clue. 

I separate the concept of faith with that of belief. I have faith that there is a universal spark or spirit that drives an order far beyond our understanding. I don’t think I’m meant to understand it, only to be vaguely aware of the mystery and to honor it with my actions. I see the spark in the patterns of nature which are best described by mathematics. I hear it in the music I listen to and sing. And I sense it every day when I step outside in the early morning, as I did today. A light wind set the branches of a spruce into gently undulating waves, while hidden in the upper crown a northern saw-whet owl called. Thirty mallards flew low over the house and the whistle in their wings joined the tonal voice of the owl. Do I need any greater miracle than this?

I seek a form of faith that gives value to the rocks that form soil to the plants, fungi and microorganisms that create a living ecosystem, and the myriad creatures with whom we share the world. Yes, we eat some of them, or use them for beasts of burden. But if we honored them, we would do so humanely, and offer thanks.

Like any other species, we are primarily concerned about ourselves, but we also have the capacity for empathy and connection with others. And the more we learn about other creatures the more we see evidence that they share our capacity for empathy. We’re unique among the tool-using creatures, with our planet-altering technology and enormous global population, but we still have kin who deserve our recognition and respect. 

Easter is celebrated in the springtime for what seems an obvious reason, as dormant plants are beginning to awaken and the first turkey peas and buttercups send their buds through the snow and duff. The annual resurrection begins, bringing joy.

As I write of being and resurrection, I’m reminded of how all things alive want to live, and how some have amazing adaptations that keep them going. Lizards can shed a wiggling tail to distract predators while they skitter off to grow a new one. Nudibranchs (sea slugs) shed their aging, parasite-ridden bodies and the head grows another one. 

Some plants engage in a sort of continuous resurrection. One family excellent at this is the Salicaceae (willow family), which includes aspen and cottonwood. 

Late last summer, an evening microburst brought down the primary trunk of an old cottonwood. I had been watching from indoors as the trees in my yard swayed and contorted under intensifying gusts. Then came a sudden and decisive whump, followed by a cloud of leaves and dirt flying up the street. 

I went out to take a look. The tree completely blocked both sidewalk and street. Fortunately, no passing car or dog walker had been in the way.

Two houses to the west, the cottonwood that fell had been a favorite of mine. It grew in the front yard of a historic log home that had once been owned by Adolph and Louise Murie. From the size of the tree, the Muries might have planted it. Its branches sheltered roosting birds and bats, and showered the sidewalk with bud scales in spring and butter-gold leaves in fall. Now those broken branches lay in a messy pile like discarded fence poles. After calling dispatch to let them know, I retreated to the upstairs bedroom to watch the storm continue. 

I sat on the bedroom floor as lightning streaked across the sky, thunder cracked like gunfire, and rain drummed on the roof. My dog hid under the bed, hyperventilating and ignoring my attempts to calm her with soothing sounds. Eventually the thunderclaps moved off and dusk settled. I stayed on the floor watching dark clouds and curtains of rain fading in the low light, held by the strange beauty of a wild evening of wind and rain and electricity. 

Then I heard a chainsaw. Since it was a Sunday evening, I had assumed the police would simply barricade the street to warn the usual speeders, and take care of it the next morning. 

Nope, they were on it. Chainsaws worked until twilight. 

I mentally thanked those workers as I sat in my snug room. Thank you, nice dispatch lady on the phone, and thank you officer who came to investigate, and thank you people who put on chaps and gloves to cut up and clean up the mess.

Before that night, I had thought of the old cottonwood as a survivor. A few weeks previous, the same neighbor’s yard produced a din of saws and chippers and wood grinders. I went out into the street to see what on earth was going on. 

A monstrous track vehicle with a pair of pincer claws was parked on the sidewalk, idling. But for all the noise, it didn’t look as though much was happening, perhaps a pruning job. In any case, the cottonwood I had long admired remained untouched. 

A few hours later I walked past the house and there was a huge stump, cut flush with the ground, a couple of feet from the front steps. I noticed, for the first time, that another ancient cottonwood had stood beside the one I worried over. Now that it was gone, too, I saw its stark absence. A wide vista of open air filled the space that had once been the crown of a tree growing beside the front porch. From the dents in the roof’s drip edge, it was clear that the tree had actually fallen on the house and there had been no choice but to remove it. 

It is possible that when my favored tree fell, it was missing its neighbor, or at least the shelter provided by proximity. Both cottonwoods had withstood plenty of wind over the decades, but a group of trees can withstand such forces far better than a tree that stands alone. 

Two antique cottonwoods, whose foliage spread over an entire front yard, were gone. The house now stands in glaring sun instead of the shade of rustling leaves. The ravens and bats will gather elsewhere to roost as the history of one small plot of land is slowly being overlain by the ever-changing present. 

But the cottonwood has a secret: resurrection. Cut it to the ground and its roots remain, full of minerals and nutrients. A ring of stout young branches will form a wreath around the stump, and if allowed to grow, they will sort themselves into a many-branched shrub. Favor one or two of them, and in a few years those new-yet-old trees will shade the yard again. Knuckles erupting in the lawn from along the tree’s extensive root system will create a forest. 

The ability of cottonwoods to be cut down and reborn offers a vignette of the circle of life. Beyond the front yard setting, along the rivers where cottonwoods grow wild, each belongs to a congregation through roots and pheromones and chemical messengers we are only starting to understand. Each lives in interdependence with its neighbors — not only other cottonwoods but the myriad forms of life that make up a forest.

The forest acts as an organism, growing old, dying, and rising again, as rivers cleanse themselves with floods, creating new terrain for cottonwood seeds to take root. 

The interdependence of individual plants and other species is a metaphor for how humanity can thrive, among ourselves and with all of our other kin. The wild world and all of its beings want to live, and manage to do so with the ever-changing present. We would do well to learn this lesson.