Pause: One Small Pear Flower: Long Train of Thought

‘When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s yours for the moment.

I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want or not……….Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.’ (Georgia O’Keefe, Artist)

Georgia O’Keefe, White Iris No 7

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

I’d had to pause while I stood watering the pear tree, and that was why I noticed it. It was tiny - just a single small white blossom - and yet it gleamed and glowed with so much light and energy that it was impossible to overlook it.

The image of that little blossom’s powerful life force has remained with me ever since, even after two weeks. The experience has opened my eyes to how being still in the usual busyness of daily life can touch the soul as deeply as any meditation or prayer.

Spring has sprung. The waysides are burgeoning with flowers - yellow daisies and blue borage and mauve mallow. The almond trees are festooned with fresh looking leaves and ripening almonds in their green husks. Trees are blossoming everywhere and the scent of orange blossom fills the air. But I do wonder how many people actually give a second thought to the magic of it all as they hurtle past in the rush to get from A to B, in a desperate urge to stay ‘in control’ of their lives. And meanwhile nature, which we are also so desperate to control, blithely carries on doing its thing, turning buds into flowers and flowers into nuts or seeds, so that next year there will be more abundance for us to enjoy.

If only we would heed the lessons that nature has to offer us.

Recently I listened to an interview with the author, Tristan Gooley, about his new book, ‘How to Read a Tree: Clues & Patterns from Roots to Leaves,’ talking about the clues that careful observation of trees can give us about place and conditions. How a ‘pale line down the centre of a leaf indicates that water is nearby … (and how) low-growing young branches reveal that a tree is struggling to survive. Tapping into this silent language of trees sharpens our understanding of the environment—to read a tree is to paint a unique portrait of the surrounding land, soil, weather, animals, people, and even time. You’ll never see a tree the same way again,’ is how the synopsis runs.

I discovered even more fascinating information about the inherited wisdom of trees when I listened to the Start the Week discussion on the BBC this week - on Ancient Trees. It turns out that their seeds contain enough genetic wisdom to enable them to rediscover ancient survival modes in a changing climate! You can listen to it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001l940.

The speakers also discussed some of the legends and symbols that we have assigned to trees since time immemorial, to my mind confirming an intuitive knowing about the wisdom of trees that we must have even if we often fail to recognise it.

The matter of Deep Time is cropping up more and more in what I read and hear, more specifically how a connection to nature can give us a better perspective on time, our inter-connectedness with the past and future and our place in the grand scheme of things. In her article in The Marginalian Maria Popova cites some of Oliver Sachs’ thoughts on the subject:

‘I find myself walking softly on the rich undergrowth beneath the trees, not wanting to crack a twig, to crush or disturb anything in the least — for there is such a sense of stillness and peace that the wrong sort of movement, even one’s very presence, might be felt as an intrusion… The beauty of the forest is extraordinary — but “beauty” is too simple a word, for being here is not just an aesthetic experience, but one steeped with mystery, and awe…The primeval, the sublime, are much better words here — for they indicate realms remote from the moral or the human, realms which force us to gaze into immense vistas of space and time, where the beginnings and originations of all things lie hidden. Now, as I wandered in the cycad forest on Rota, it seemed as if my senses were actually enlarging, as if a new sense, a time sense, was opening within me, something which might allow me to appreciate millennia or eons as directly as I had experienced seconds or minutes.’

There was a time when time itself was measured, not by clocks but by the seasons. It was, in many ways, a kinder, more human way of counting life’s events, and certainly a more sustainable way of being. When we measured time by nature’s clocks we needed to be more patient. When next summer’s meals must be planted in autumn, and the winter food supply put by during the harvest we needed to think more long-term than we do in an age when we can buy strawberries from the supermarket in midwinter.

Short-term thinking lies at the root of many of the world’s current problems - including our economic ones - argues Richard Fisher in his book, ‘Taking the Long View.’ You can find out more here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230329-the-benefits-of-deep-time-thinking.

We have become so accustomed to instant solutions. We lose patience with someone who doesn’t answer our messages or calls instantly. We concentrate for ever shorter periods of time thanks to the deluge of input that is demanding of our attention on social media, in our inboxes and online. We receive information as fleeting images and bite-sized snippets. But listen to Peter Wohleben (author of The Hidden Life of Trees) talk about the profound differences between a forest of ancient trees and a plantation of young ones in that BBC discussion and you will discover the immense value of taking time over things. His new book The Power of Trees is reviewed here.

Perhaps, without knowing it, this is one of the reasons that we make art about flowers and trees and landscapes. Certainly for me, taking the time to be mindfully observant about what I am seeing and what I am doing when I am making art connects me to something that goes deeper than the present instant. Just as that pause at the pear tree did that day that I stood watering it.

Has there been anything to stop you in your tracks and give you pause for thought recently? Do add a comment if you’d like to share.