Earth Sensory Perception is a subsection of Our Uncertain Future and represents a compilation of essays on animistic nature connections in the modern world. To unsubscribe from this section, go to your account settings, select Our Uncertain Future, and then toggle off the section Earth Sensory Perception to no longer receive these emails.
I am excited to introdude a guest writer and our long-time friend, Gary Feuerman. Eric, Gary and I used to perform in many a writing event around town together, as well as an online ekphrasis-style flash fiction blog back in the day called Postmodern Petroglyphs. We even contributed to a Pecha Kucha Night together in 2012. Gary joined the Winter Writing Challenge I offered last month and shared his writing in the Facebook group. This piece about his relationship with a “brother tree” during his brother’s cancer treatment struck me, not just because the themes of animism and nature connection are prefectly aligned with Earth Sensory Perception, but because of the beauty, vulnerability and energy of the writing.
Gary says about himself, “Entrepreneur and business lawyer who came to Taos, NM in 2003 to leave those things behind and live a contemplative writing life while wandering the high desert and Sangre de Cristos (preferably with a long beard and a shawl). 21+ years later, I'm finally getting back to where I began, but now with two young daughters, a life partner who conjures sublime chocolate from cacao beans, and a variety of peaks, valleys, and deserts (literal and figurative) to write about.”
#7 Evergreen by Gary Feuerman
I’ve always had relationships with trees. When I was little, I hugged the trunks of the oaks that towered in my backyard making an amphitheater of sky over the little, pink-tiled basketball court my dad made for me. I cried for the oak near the property line that fell out of its concrete mooring in a summer windstorm and came within 3 feet of demolishing part of our kitchen. It was a gnarly furrowed tree that had been split by lightning years before and bled a tarry sap. The gardeners cut up the fallen giant into firewood for people with fireplaces (not us). I always noticed the trees in parks standing in all weather in all seasons, dressed in leaves or shorn naked under the clouds of winter. This is my favorite tree season when the branches are fully revealed. If you look close, notice that they all curve up toward the sun and dance in the smallest of breezes. I used to take time and watch the sway and jiggle. I’d lie down on the grass or dirt and look up disorienting myself into a world of vertical beings and sky. More recently, in Taos, I discovered a Pinon tree, an evergreen, on the trail to Devisadero Peak. It became my brother, literally. It had an opening in the branches like outstretched arms waiting to take me in. I would walk into its shelter and lean into it. There was a sharp knob that I knew was for pressing my third eye. I’d hug my brother and press my forehead into the knob. Instantly, I’d make up prayers and spin energy circles through my belly, up through my throat to my face and out the top of my crown. When my brother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I’d hike barefoot to my brother tree and pray with him. I’d conjure the whole forest and could see with my eyes closed and my forehead pressed against the knob the web of life in golden nodes throughout this forest and all forests. I could hear my brother tree groan in the wind and feel its flexibility in my arms. It made clicking sounds and the needles licked my ears. My brother was alive and awake in every way. I felt that together we could lift my blood brother’s cancer and send it throughout the forest network to be changed into other energy. I knew this. I went to him every day. I sent my energy in rings clockwise then counterclockwise. I saw my brother’s face in my dark inner film studio projected against the light behind the curtain. Me and brother tree groaned together confident we could cure Stephen. I believed this with everything I had. Magic. And for a couple of months in the summer of ’21, the disease waned. Stephen was hopeful. I kept walking barefoot to brother tree. As the seasons began turning and my feet got colder, Stephen’s cancer roared back and filled him with fluids. The chemo didn’t work. The alternative meds didn’t work. Stephen lost more weight and the feeling in his hands and feet. He became gaunt. He walked with a cane. His goatee got long and I thought he looked like my vision of Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea. I still conjured the forest and spun the energy. I cried to my brother and walked barefoot in the cold. Some days, I talked to him as I hiked and he was funny. High on methadone. The conversation jumped from track to track. In December, I walked barefoot in the snow and came to my brother to say goodbye to Stephen. It was a windy, cold day and brother tree, a short, squat one among squatty trees, groaned louder and higher pitched than usual. I spun the energy still, knowing it was more for myself than for Stephen. After he died, I came back to the tree through the winter, still hiking barefoot in the ice and mud. I conjured the forest, the golden nodes, and I spun the energy and listened to my brother.
Glad to see Gary popping in for a cameo, and it was great to take in his rich words and elemental grace. Here's to brotherhood and sisterhood in myriad forms and manifestations!