By Katherine Ziff , PhD
“If you listen, they will teach you.” That is what the United Plant Savers sticker on the front of my notebook says about the plants. And it is true.
February of this year brought my second Deep Ecology Artist Fellowship at the UpS Botanical Sanctuary in Rutland, Ohio, 23 miles south of my home. The first fellowship was in 2017, and I spent most of my time with the prairie area and up on the Sanctuary’s Reclaim Trail. This time I went to the forest.
Arriving for my first visit I worried about whether I would be able to walk the trails and cover much ground at all. For several months a tendon injury had kept me from walking any substantial distance, and I wondered if I would make it up the hill to reach the woods. But I did, and by the end of February, I was walking the Medicine Trail with ease in its entirety, hills and all.
The process unfolded in a spiral of walking, noticing, listening, perceiving, wondering, writing, distilling the writing into learning, and walking some more. Art making and library research deepened the process. I brought along my not-quite-filled field notebook from 2017, writing in it when I stopped to eat my lunch and at the end of the day. I made a journal in which to organize and distill the field notes and make drawings, hand printing the cover and endpapers with botanical material harvested from the Sanctuary. And then I stitched the whole thing together with linen thread and made a pocket in the back cover to hold extra research materials. The following are excerpts from this journal along with wisdom from the plants.
Week One: Standing up at the forest edge by the yurt, so quiet. A silence. Slowly I begin to hear faint sounds: a melting icicle drips, birds chirp and cheep, way in the distance a rooster crows. Quiet. Peace. My shoulders drop. Remembering that greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia) grows here, I searched for a few minutes to no avail. Back down and now I am over by the pond, having fetched a folding chair from the Gazebo where I sit in the snow and listen, be, observe. Reverting to analog time with a wristwatch. In the distance a train makes a slow semicircle around going north from the Ohio River up and around. I wonder about the train. Would I have heard it here a hundred years ago?1 Before me, a gray-black-brown hillside of trees with snow that in the shadows is deep violet turning to white in the sun. A slower, less exact time…birds call softly, melting snow drips. I eat my lunch (hot soup in a thermos) sitting next to “Young Sycamore” according to the sign marking the presence of this forest being growing out in the open sun.
From Young Sycamore: Welcome back. Come again and rest with us here. Rest, learn, rest.
I sit awhile, resting in the sun and then walk up to the entrance to the Medicine Trail. There I come upon greenbrier, a little starter vine with three green leaves, only eight inches or so tall. Nodding and shimmying in the breeze. Bending and dipping and waving, the happy sight of a seemingly energetic little plant dancing in the snow. Continuing on a few paces I notice Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) trees on the sunny side of the trail and wonder about clipping a small branch or two to take home to my studio.2 As I walk past, cedar brushes my face: a Grandmother cedar, she is tall, old, full, and bent. She takes me back to my childhood in North Carolina, of cedars growing in abandoned fields and of our prickly cedar Christmas trees. Never an elegant balsam from the mountains, always a local cedar. My father used to split cedar logs into beautiful kindling and brought my husband and me boxfuls to make our fires. Warmth, home, a welcome from cedar.
Week Two: Lots of snow. Everything is frozen, but beneath the ice the creek flows and the springs trickles. Up on the Medicine Trail—sounds: creek rushes, spring trickles, water sounds, rattle of dry beech leaves still on the trees. The wind comes through the treetops—far away, and now it is here. I look for the little dancing greenbrier, searching, but do not see it. Maybe the snow and ice got the little plant. Perching on a fallen tree, I eat my lunch. Halfway through the hot soup I notice, right by the trail in front of me, a greenbrier vine growing all around and with berries! For several years I have searched to find one with berries, and here it is. And walking back, about to step off the Medicine Trail, there at my feet is the little dancing greenbrier, waving and shimmying.
From Smilax rotundifolia: Whatever you are searching for, you won’t find it by hunting. It will appear, unbidden and in its own time, for you. And it will be all the more delightful this way.
Week Three: The snow has melted, water everywhere—the creek rushes, a spring trickles. And wind. On the Medicine Trail I hear it first from the far side of the ridge. Then the rattle of the dry beech leaves still on the trees, pale golden tan in the sun. The leaves on the ground skitter and rustle. I hear a constant quiet roar all around and seemingly behind the ridge in front of me where I sit on the fallen tree for lunch with greenbrier. The roar of the wind travels and circles like last week’s train. A ghost train maybe. I wonder, Was the Underground Railroad active in this area?1 A lone beech leaf vibrates furiously in the wind. A big whoosh of wind comes through, everything all at once from the ground to the treetops. Flutter, rattle, whoosh, big waves of whoosh. Behind and underneath it all the roar of the wind undulates and travels around me where I sit. I look up at the trees cautiously. It is warm sitting here in a patch of sunlight. The wind roars, branches creak and groan. I get up and move along on the Medicine Trail. Rounding a turn in the trail I am in the heart of the beech forest. Peaceful, sunlit, big, strong, American beech trees. I hear the low roar now right above me, louder, and the clatter and brushing of the high branches. From across the creek a loud CRACK. Was it a rifle? A minute later—CRACK and a crashing of branches through the trees and then a tremendous thundering THUD. A big tree falls to the ground way up the ridge on the other side of Main Hollow Creek. I keep moving and complete this circuit of the Medicine Trail. Sitting at a picnic table by the Yurt, I reflect on how moving it is to witness the moment when the enormous body of such a being as a tree falls. I feel I now know something of why tree sitters do as they do. And I ask the trees: What can we do?
The Trees: We are afraid for our tree friends. As we connect with them, there is much fear in which their wisdom becomes entangled, and they can no longer transmit this wisdom to their young brethren or to each other or to anyone who chooses to listen. They are absorbing fear from the planet. We fear for the young trees that struggle to take hold. As you—humans—send us care and strength, we pass it on to where it is needed. It matters not which trees you choose to illuminate with your care. We receive and pass it along, each tree according to their connections.
Week Four: Warm, sunny, a breeze. I open the car door and step into quiet, peace. My shoulders drop, and I inhale the smell of fresh grass and damp earth. Heading out the Medicine Trail, clockwise from the Yurt this time, I have lunch on a log next to Pignut hickory (Carya glabra), a big one. A bird’s trills continue for a good while. The big creek burbles busily, and the spring trickles; there is plenty of water. The wind shifts and rustles the treetops a little. Quiet. Lunch of toasted cheese and soup with this old Pignut hickory that holds many years of history. The fallen tree I sit on also holds history and tree wisdom. I imagine as it slowly disintegrates, it sends this wisdom into the soil creating soil wisdom. I continue on the trail, across the creek, up through the beech woods, past my lunch spot with greenbrier. Then a Barred owl calls out twice, from the east out over the Reclaim Trail: “Hoo hoo hoooo hoooo.” And from the west comes a faint reply, “Who Cooks for You.” My mother taught me the Barred owl call this way. Two owls calling to each other at midday—could there be a more magical way of ending this February’s time in the woods at United Plant Savers? Heading back and feeling somewhat spent, I sit in the sun on a large fl at rock embedded in the ground. Looking around I see greenbrier, bringing one more message:
There is no need to travel far and wide to find the Heart of Nature. It is always at your feet and right above your head. Once you make such a connection as is found here in this forest it will remain always in your heart, for that is where Nature resides.
- A century ago, a person collecting medicinal plant material in Paynes Woods (as the Sanctuary lands used to be called) would have heard the train running along the route that it does today: from south of the Sanctuary at the Ohio River, up to Rutland, and then on upward to the west of the Sanctuary toward Albany, Athens, and points beyond. This line opened for passengers and freight in 1870. Rutland received its first railroad depot in 1886; painted olive green, it had three rooms. Edgar Ervin’s (1950) Pioneer History of Meigs County notes that the freight room was interesting with a variety of articles such as baby chickens, furniture, produce, and an occasional “occupied” coffin. The last passenger train left this depot in 1951, and the freight line continues. (Jordan Pickens, Pomeroy Daily Sentinel, 9 January 2019).
- With an okay from the UpS office I clipped a few small branches from Grandmother cedar. Fresh plant material in my studio at home brings the presence of the plants and landscape of the Sanctuary and fills the space with a palpable presence of Nature.
- Rutland, just a few miles from the Sanctuary, was known as a station on the Underground Railroad. Those traveling from Pomeroy where they had crossed the Ohio River were met, hidden, and transported north via “by-roads, paths, across lots and ways known only to pioneers and hunters” to Albany and from there northward. (A Letter from Mrs. C. Grant, Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio August 28, 1884. In The Underground Railroad – Gallia and Meigs Counties, Part 1. By Lorna Hart for the Pomeroy Daily Sentinel, 26 February 2021.)
