Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Livin, Svetlana Konnikova [classic fiction .TXT] 📗

our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much. When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and, turning toward the cast, I beheld the countless hosts of the forest hushed and tran- quil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, “My peace I give unto you.”42

In addition to Frost, Thoreau, and Muir, many others have penned their reverence for nature. In 1913, poet Joyce Kilmer graciously wrote of his love and admiration for powerful creations of nature in his beautiful poem Trees. He compared a tree with a poem and described that a tree “looks at God all day and lifts her leafy arms to pray”. I wonder, if it is a coincidence between this poem and a story in prose once told to me by Marion, a good and wise friend and neighbor? Marion is 84 years old. She is still a very beautiful, statuesque lady and carries herself with great dignity. I call her “My Victorian Lady.” You will not meet this special breed very often today.

When Marion was born in 1923 on a picturesque farm in Pennsylvania, her parents planted a small sugar maple near their farm house to celebrate her birth. So, Marion and Sugar, her tree-friend, grew up together. Marion played near her maple. She liked to stroke the smooth grey-brown bark that covered the trunk. She often hugged her tree and shared secret thoughts with it. One day, while Marion watched her mother tap the sap from the sugar maple and make her delicious maple syrup, she thought it must be painful for the tree to give all she had—her vital juices. She felt so sorry for her friend. She hugged her tree with all her heart and asked her how she was feeling and what she could do for her. The sun shone through the bright green leaves at the top of the tree. Pale green leaves below shimmered with a satin finish sparkle reminiscent of invisible silver stars in the sky that sometimes can be seen in the daylight. The sugar maple stood like a pretty young woman, lifting her strong leafy arms to the sky. Her leaves trembled slightly in unison with the wind. Then Marion heard a quiet, tender murmur. Her tree-friend was sending back to her all she had to give, her positive energy and strength. Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 247

My good friend, Jan Marie Werblin Kemp, recalls how childhood visits to her grandmother’s country home fostered in her a profound love of Nature and especially trees.

I climbed the steep quartz gravel drive to my grandmother’s house, past clumps of the tiniest purple forget-me-nots, smatterings of bright yel ow daffodils, mammoth stalks of purple velvet hol yhocks, white “snowbal ”

bushes, pink peonies, ice-blue hydrangea. The air in spring was alive with the buzzing of honeybees, fluttering butterflies and hummingbirds. And, in a clearing, atop the hill, barely visible from the winding road that cut through Maryland’s rural pastures in the 1950s, sat my grand- mother’s brown-shingled house nestled in a sylvan setting—sky-high poplars, red maples, blue spruces, mighty oaks and chestnut trees. I often heard them speak as they bent under the weight of the wind. Acorns crunched under my feet as I walked beneath the oaks, and a blanket of soft fragrant needles beckoned me to lie down and rest beneath a blue spruce that swept the clouds away with its feathery branches. Deeper in the woods, where the air is heady and rich with oxygen, a fallen log lay rotting on parched brown leaves. A microcosm of life had made that log its world. Lichens crowned the crumbling bark; worms wound their way in and out of round holes. And from the disintegration, new tree shoots pushed out from the rich brown humus the dead tree had become. As I studied that log, I realized that I was learning an immense- ly valuable life lesson. Within the serenity of the forest, alone with the log, I learned that living organisms never die, they merely change their form. Trees, like humans, are sacrosanct and eternal.

Mother Nature built a bridge of communion between plants and us on our birthdays. Come to your tree. Snuggle up to it and listen carefully to the quiet rustle of its leaves. Bond with your tree and it will share its magic with you. If you have even a small piece of land near your home, plant your own tree and enjoy its energy.

As a child I thought that all artists were humans, but I was wrong and I’ll tell you why. I drew primitive pictures of flowers and trees and unusual plants. When I became a journalist and traveled a lot, I always carried with me an 248 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

album and crayons. New drawings appeared in my sketchbook: old buildings in various cities, people’s faces, scenery. These sketches always reminded me of visits to unknown places and meetings with interesting people. When I drew Nature scenes, I discovered fresh beauty in each new picture. In my sketchbook appeared trees covered with a young, delicate green coat in spring’s forest and bright, sometimes fluorescent flowers and golden wheat ripening in the fields in summer. In autumn my album held pictures of rust-colored blooming wild flowers and countless red-yellow-orange-green leaves, falling everywhere and celebrating the last days of their lives.

One day I realized who the true artists were. I understood that the most talented artists on earth are not people, but al