The Grieving Tree

            There is a Zen Buddhist monastery in the Santa Lucia Mountains of California called Tassajara—ironically, an Ohlone word meaning “the meat drying place”. I lived there as a monk in the early 1990s, and believe me, you won’t find any strips of meat hanging around

in the sun there anymore.

The name comes from the indigenous peoples that lived there along Cabarga Creek during the summer months before the Spanish discovered the hot springs. It is still remote and barely accessible, although its serene beauty is generously shared with any visitor who manages to score a reservation through San Francisco Zen Center.  

It is an ecologically delicate place, so its caretakers and the land itself are sustained and replenished during the other three seasons by what is lovingly called practice periods. It is where I first heard this very Zen sentiment: Enlightenment is beginningless and practice is endless. I can attest to the last part of that, but I now suspect it had deeper roots in the Soto Zen tradition.

During those off-season periods of being cut off from the outside world and contained by what we referred to as The Schedule, we were released into the wild for the better part of what we called four-and-nine days, meaning any calendar day that ended with a 4 or a 9.

Most of us would pack a lunch and go hiking in the beautiful surrounding mountains, and one of our favorite places to hike was called The Wind Caves, named for the sandstone outcroppings carved out in the desert-like landscape. They were like benevolent arched Beings that greeted us after a somewhat challenging trek, offering rest and shade and succor.

About a half mile into the woods along the path, there is a brief uphill climb ending in a rightward turn along the hillside, and just at that turn, I met a tree that spoke to me. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I literally heard it speak. Well, it was more like a groan actually, and I tried to ignore it the first time I passed by. It shocked my consciousness and left a nagging feeling that I had missed a soulful opportunity to commune with nature.

During the time between those 4-and-9 days, I thought about my encounter with that grieving tree. My awareness of what happened shifted to a deeper level, and I soon realized that she was grieving over a fire that had afflicted the hillside some years before. It left scars on her bark and destroyed some of the trees in her living field. She carried that deep wound ever since. At one point, an image flashed into my mind during meditation. An image of a fire blazing through those woods. It was just a flash, but it carried in it a knowingness that I needed to return to that tree and allow her to tell me her story.

At the next opportunity, I hike up the road and along the path to the small ponderosa pine where the path turns inward. (I say small though my intuition says dwarfed, perhaps due to her obsession over the fire.) When I reach her again, I apologize for not listening the last time, sit down and lean my back against her trunk. Together, we breathe for perhaps twenty minutes. I feel her groans turn into sighing even as my own breath deepens and slows, until we both feel the rhythm of the Mother’s body, a return of her nurturing into our roots, and joy rises up out of the ashes of a burning memory.

A wound was healed in both of us that day. From then on, every time I passed by that beautiful spirit, we shared a gratitude that persisted, for me at least, until this day. I wonder how she is these days? After more than 30 years, would I recognize her? Is she okay?

I sense a journey into those mountains in my future, but who knows when.

I send her my love.