Notes from an Evacuee’s Journal Upon Returning to the Woods

Before the storm:

The word “hurricane” is deeply strange to me still. I never heard it growing up in the far away north place where a thunderstorm moving across the lake was an awe-inspiring event to be savored as I cuddled beside my grandmother on the porch swing at the end of the long verandah, drinking in just this thrilling bit of Nature’s power.

Two days before the storm hit, Joe and I learned from the morning paper that this storm, Katrina, was serious. During the previous hurricane we decided that in any future storm we would surely evacuate. We went immediately to the business of trying to wrap things up for A Studio in the Woods, sadly canceling our September artist resident’s airline ticket from Cuba and doing our best to get word to him, Damian Aquilas… to whom we had so long looked forward…and making arrangements with our blessed friends in Arkansas to whom we would evacuate and who had offered this refuge several hurricanes ago.

We made lists, began collecting and securing every moveable object and artworks outdoors, getting gas in the van amongst long lineups of cars, planning food and drink for animals we would transport and sadly deciding our cat, Birdie Boy, was too wild to evacuate… By evening we were totally exhausted. Joe had climbed tall ladders to the five high plate glass second floor windows with huge plywood covers he had cut years ago and fitted to each window with special bolts. It was extremely difficult for one man alone. He never complained and refused my help or commiseration. I made a lot of egg salad sandwiches and organized human and animal food for coolers. We’d be away only a few days, maybe a week… Just before we closed the door for the last time a pang came into my chest--maybe we would never see this home of 35 years again—I ran back through the house collecting precious photographs of those we loved. We locked the door—still tired from the day before but filled with a spirit of adventure.

Day 4 of our return to the woods:

In these 39 days since our worlds have been rearranged, a great deal that we assumed was “eternal” in our lives is now entirely different, so transformed as to be gone. As I move through the days there are tears right behind my eyelids every moment--tears for myself, tears for countless, nameless, faceless others, tears for friends, for the birds and frogs who are silent, for the little spiders trying so valiantly to yet again recoup their egg sacks to re-gather themselves and their progeny for the winter ahead. I respect them and work around them as I attempt to begin the “cleanup.”

Even as I write of tears I feel them hotly as I look at the tremendous fallen water oak beside the pond—a trusted friend and symbol of strength and stability, awesome beauty and wisdom. Down. Mortally wounded. And many others. To me these huge trees have always represented guardians, the Keepers of the Vision and the Canopy. How will we find our way without them?

I have used those words “our canopy” so many times in glibly discussing the forest—as if I knew it. I had no realization of “canopy” as I’m beginning to have now, and trying hard to reach out farther to the tips of the meaning of “canopy,” and the presumptuousness of calling it “ours”. This canopy is largely gone in many places, badly wounded in others. Looking up one sees blue sky and sunlight. It’s just beginning to penetrate my consciousness that canopy makes possible a whole way of life for human beings and animals. It provides food and shelter in a huge pervasive, perfectly timed way, warmth in winter, coolness in summer in a way that only the natural world can. Without natural canopy we humans can invent canopy, invent the coolness and warmth it provides. We cannot invent the birdsong, the rustling of leaves and myriad, kaleidoscopic imagery of branch and leaf patterns of the natural canopy. We must live, too, as prisoners of our manmade canopies. What a miracle—the canopy of a tree! The presence or absence of which has created or destroyed whole communities, even civilizations. This awareness—a gift of the hurricane: What will life be like in the summer to come without this canopy? Can we even live here without this protective, cooling canopy? Despair seems everywhere.
First evening arriving home:

It was dusk. We opened the broken gate to A Studio in the Woods, slowly drove the road gasping and sighing to see our fallen friends—everywhere. We had to stop the van because of a 6” diameter pecan, snapped, its top blocking our way. It was one of Joe’s special pecan children, progeny of Big Mama Pecan who mothered this place and us from the first moments we walked the land beneath her branches. She had laid herself down years ago with foresight to provide her offspring for Joe’s continuing care. I knew he ached seeing this youngster mortally wounded.

We stopped the van and made a path to the house through a deep tangle of branches and grasses. I looked skyward and noticed the Japanese Magnolia we planted years ago in front of the house. “Oh, Joe! This is weird! The magnolia! It’s blooming!” There were several beautiful but pathetic looking blossoms amidst the “war zone”—the words I used in the next days when friends called our cell phones to ask how things are. “It looks like a war was fought here, tanks and trucks and armies just marching through,” and it did. Devastation everywhere and bodies-=-bodies of huge pecans, hackberries, Venable oaks… and in the midst of all this was the magnolia with three lovely blossoms. Bizarre, sad, pathetic. It could only be explained by the disaster of the storm which must have disoriented, confused this tree and all plant life. And on the next day there were more blossoms and the delicate light green leaves that follow the blossoms.

The following morning botanist David Baker, our Environmental Curator, blessedly arrived…the first time we’d seen him in 42 days. My first question was about the magnolia: Had it gone crazy with distress?
“No, indeed! It’s the drive to create seed, to propagate more magnolias, to save the species after a disaster which endangers it…If you don’t get your leaves out there you don’t get any energy.”

Suddenly I can imagine trees as sailing ships, their energy coming from winds against the sails. In a windstorm the sails must be lowered immediately or the ship will be swamped and toppled. After the storm the sails are raised very quickly so that the ship can regain its source of energy and return to is purpose--moving through waters.

Oh my god…I was 180 degrees wrong in my imagined reasons for what seemed a bizarre, tragic, even ridiculous situation. Could it be true that a tree is never confused, never bizarre, never ridiculous? Could it be true that putting out leaves and flowering was exactly the right thing to do? And where is this knowledge, this drive for Life? From what Mind, what Source…? Ever since this moment my own small mind has been reeling with ideas, realizations, whole new understandings, awe, respect and joy. And ever since this moment my eyes have begun to be cleared of the clouds of my assumptions and huge gaps of understanding. I’ve since seen the drive to reproduce everywhere I look, step, venture--including Joe’s wounded pecan tree. Just below the ragged broken edge of the trunk there are a dozen young pale green shoots –the beginning of a canopy.

Every plant is dancing to this universal music—not thinking, fearing, figuring, worrying—just abandoning self to the music. We humans with these cumbersome brains have a much more difficult time dancing to the music, even hearing a few notes. But in moments since that conversation with Dave I see a bit and I hear a few notes and my heart beats faster. I sense the exhilaration of the dance. Even though today I feel exhausted and discouraged at the endless hard work of returning I keep dipping into this new Knowing. Sensing. Dancing. It’s full Spring in the Woods…in late October.

Now, we at A Studio in the Woods begin to refocus ourselves with the urgency and guidance of the forest’s energy. We recognize this precious ecological and spiritual moment within which scientists and artists can document and interpret the forest’s response to this tremendous natural event. For which reason we are offering newly conceived residencies in which the wider community and we ourselves can learn from the wisdom of the forest.

For much more information please go to A Walk In The Woods and to Forest Recovery Study and Interpretation Residencies for Scientists and Artists (coming soon).

— Lucianne Carmichael

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