The Tattooed Tree

The Legacies of Humans

The Tattooed Tree

I recently visited a local arboretum with its giant 130-year old Weeping Beech tree. Under her branches, there’s a boardwalk for humans to walk around and view her in all her magnificence … her multiple trunks arching gracefully to the ground, only to rise again like a new tree, her leaves gently moving in the breeze, and how she’s being supported by her humans to help support her as she’s grown.

What you also notice are her tattoos. I call them tattoos, and she’s been defaced over the years with initials, names, words and hearts that beg the promise of love everlasting; love which probably never lasted as long as the scars on the tree will last; permanent scars.

I spent some time with this tree on this visit; this beautiful Weeping Beech; ironically named, considering all the pain it’s felt with every knife carving into it. And yet, what I found was not anger, or a victim. What I found was a sadness and, something else; an immense honor in the scars she bears. As I placed my hand on this tree and listened, these were the words I heard:

“Believe it or not, it got easier over the years to feel the sharp blade of someone leaving a lasting legacy in my bark. Yes, at first, there was surprise, even horror, until I tried to understand them, these two-legged Earth-surface walkers. I realized that they saw me as something (not someONE) capable of holding a legacy they probably didn’t even know they longed for; knowing that I’d live beyond them, carrying this moment in time far longer than any human could. I imagined that they believed other humans would come by and wonder ‘who carved this?’ or ‘who were these lovers? Was their love returned?’ I realized that they entrusted me to tell their story, or at least hold the mystery and wonder of their story.

How sad that humans try so hard to be seen, known and heard! That their presence here on this planet isn’t enough for them. I feel sadness that they couldn’t see this from the perspective of a tree; never moving from the spot on which I was seeded or planted and yet capable of dancing in the wind and being a home to the birds and other living beings! These two-legged, Earth-surface walkers can go anywhere, do anything … what more could they want from this lifetime?

I only wish they realized that I, too, am a living being, with a wish to create a legacy through my presence. That, while one carving might not be deep enough to allow dangerous pathogens in to harm me; that I’ll usually compartmentalize the wound, which will eventually heal over, that repeated carvings might allow an invasive fungus or microbe in; that leaving their legacy might end mine; that multiple carvings deface me to the point of my bark being unrecognizable. I am no longer a fine specimen of a Weeping Beech. I am now a fine specimen of human ignorance. And one ignorance leads to another; permission to carved something in me because someone, before you, did so already.  

I hold hundreds of scars; tattoos; evidence of human ignorance and longing. I’ve survived. In fact, I live to be a teacher of these ignorant acts of humans; not with anger or resentment. You can see how strong I am; that I continue to grow in my one spot allotted me for my lifetime. I live to be a teacher of kindness and compassion. When someone places their hands on me today, there is a sweetness and gentleness to that touch. Sometimes, there is even an apology, a whisper, “Please forgive what they did to you”; oh-so-softly, so only I can hear it.

That is often enough to get me through the day.”

(First written in 2018. Edited in 2022. During the COVID lockdowns, vandals decided to carve into this tree. It’s survived once more, and now there’s a lot of protection around the tree that makes it difficult to connect physically. We can do so much better than this.)