Celebrating the Pilot Project, beginning the Nursery
You are invited to celebrate the Fall Equinox with Arboretum Detroit and Field Temple on Saturday, September 21st, 5-11 pm. There is so much to celebrate, among them is the completion of the first Arboretum project: Treetroit 1. Field Temple and Arboretum Detroit, 5333 Elmwood and 5300 Elmwood, Detroit, MI 48211
Everyone welcome
The next few months we'll be preparing for, and implementing the Neighborhood Tree Nursery project, supported by a grant from Detroit Future City. You can read more about this project here.
We have set regular workdays for the first, second and third Tuesdays of each month, 6-8pm. This could mean picking up bricks and throwing them into a pile, pruning trees, picking up garbage, measuring distances, brainstorming ideas, and who knows yet what else. This is just the very beginning, since we have finally received the legal go-ahead to get started preparing the land.
Below is the approved design for the Nursery. We are hoping to be planting trees by the end of October."
Before and After - Reflections from Michigan’s Old Growth Forest
Kinga stopped to take a picture of the massive nurse log that we climbed over. It was covered with moss like most things in a mature forest. In the hole of a long gone branch she spied the tiniest of Hemlock saplings. It was so fresh and tiny that it could have emerged days ago. I came to look and said that it would be a nice picture to use for the next blog and that we could title it “before and after.” I thought this would capture something about the cyclical nature of life in the forest.
Kinga said, “which is before and which is after?” This question more accurately captures the cyclical nature of life in the old growth forest. Nuances of understanding like this enter the mind like osmosis when we spend ample time in the forest. There is a completely different sense of time and importance.
Yes, logic tells us that because the tiny Hemlock sapling is green and new, and that the trunk of the old Hemlock is horizontal and moss covered, that the tiny sprout is “after.” The fallen giant is “before” because it lived likely 300 years before it fell to its current position perhaps 20 years ago. However, this giant, itself, once looked exactly like this little sprout, which in its turn will live a few hundred years before becoming horizontal and nursing the next tiny giant to be. In short, there is no “before and after.” This is part of why spending time enriches our spirit and soothes the soul lest we think that there is a “before and after” for us. Seeing that a long fallen Cedar still has one green branch or that a mossy nurse log supports more life on the forest floor than it did standing remind me that death is a lie. There is only the timeless flow of energy, circulating among the many beings here.
Entering a forest is entering a soup of flux. We step outside of time and into a reality that is not constructed but just is. Man-made landscapes and contrivances are wrung out of us like mopwater. Concrete and the grid of streets and strip malls, bright lights and sirens, cell phones and television are wiped from the mind like ink from the whiteboard. Here we see with the whole self. We lose our “selves,” and breathe in reciprocity with the trees, back and forth connecting right at the source. Enter tree time.
We are so fortunate to have a place like this in Michigan. Although it is barely in Michigan; did you know you could drive for 12 hours and still be in Michigan? Yes the Porcupine Mountains State Park is at the far western edge of the upper peninsula. Don’t let the drive scare you off. It’s worth it every time. The park is about 60,000 acres of forest, half of which is old growth. There are about 100 miles of trails to hike, and 23 miles of wild Lake Superior shore. And the trees just keep getting older, and younger.
