The eagles are above in the trees and the sky. The clouds hang so low that they collect on the lenses of your sunglasses if you walk briskly enough. The forest is brilliant with Lichen and Moss. Colonies of green climb the trunks of the trees. The ground still erupting in mushrooms here and there, even as the buds are now set on the branches.
Today I started pruning the fruit trees behind the bakery, an annual privilege that I am granted this year as I was last. It is always more fun to prune a tree the year after you pruned it first. Invariably that encounter was spent correcting the branches that got away, and visualizing growth to look forward to. The second year, the tree has responded to your call, and it is your turn again. This is a lovely game to play with an old apple tree. The patterns of the individual distinctly respond to the cuts of the previous year, and so the interaction is unique. Every tree a different tendency; a novel predilection.
When I find myself among their familiar branches, it is as if I am engaged warmly with a good friend. So close that I can surmise their health in the texture of new bark on a young branch, or the size of the bud at its tip. This creature has grown connected to the immediate earth, it is awash always in the air that flows through here, it drinks only the water that is delivered to it out of the sky. I am grateful for my engagement with this tree and this place.
Later in the season I will be moving fast as I prune; automated skills returned to me. For now I move slowly and deliberately and with due caution, spying the invisible blossoms and fruit along the leaf bare branches. With the help of mason bees there will be apples in a few short months, unless I nip them out of there. Some I will; too many will overburden the tree. Those that point up and down and in and out. The lateral buds, the ones that point over, are the most desirable. Always doing my best to preserve the potential of the tree, never asking too much.
It is also wise to look for places where reduced light and airflow have made it impossible for the branches to flourish. Black sooty patches or signs of sudden death; peeling bark or dead buds, all indicate heavier pruning is needed. Whenever possible, the branches should be cut at their base, where they originate. Although, this rule like every other is regularly broken. The aim is openness and vigor, leaving lots of potential for fruit.
It is critical that the tools you use be clean and sharp. This makes the job much easier and reduces the likelihood a damaging organism will be transported from one location to another. Precise and deliberate cuts are the rule, from a position that offers you full view of the work. A ladder, the right sort of ladder, helps to accommodate this.
What I find in the branches of these fruit trees is different than what I find in the forest. These trees have grown dependent on me, or someone like me. They have been bred and grafted and planted and pruned into the condition they find themselves, in some cases enjoying the assistance of human hands for thousands of years. They are evidence of the ancient connection we have to the world. The way we have made modifications so that at its edges it serves us more perfectly and completely.
The earliest organisms had to overcome the distinct need of each cell to breathe the air and bathe in the light. In order for the greater organism to appear, some cells were isolated and sequestered deep within the growing tissue of the beast. In return for their entombment, everything needed would be delivered by an intricate web of tubes and canals, like roads and bridges humming and buzzing and bearing the weight of commerce. Complexity built upon complexity until the network consumed itself. Every constituent part subsumed beneath the heaving, steam breathing beast.
I wonder what the value of individualism really is. How sacred is identity? If overcome completely, what sin would be committed? Maybe there was once a resistance organization composed of single celled militants that fought until the bitter end against the giants that had so improved upon their modest abilities. Of course for this reason they were crushed, although they continue to wage a guerrilla war to this day.
Maybe it is best, or worse just inevitable that those who inhabit the apartments in the towers in the cities by the water's edge do not understand how to prune an apple tree. They do not care. Some can just barely muster the will to know how the fruit they choose to eat came to be. It is certainly worth the effort to encourage them to consider this at least.
I am grateful for my window seat on the world, out here in the air and the sun or the rain when it comes. Whether by the mud of the bay or at the crest of a black hill I stubbornly assert my desire to be free of the great beast that inhabits this earth; the mighty new organism that reshapes the terrain. I will likely join the numerous individuals crushed by this behemoth, but for today I will live among the trees and rejoice.