A Dappled Canopy

Southern live oaks often grow broader than they grow tall, sending limbs this way and that in a jumble of wood that often has to be carefully managed and pruned to avoid the intrusion of limbs into homes or back into the tree itself.  These majestic oaks can live for hundreds of years and their canopy, while not nearly as thick as that provided by the fir and redwood trees of the west, can stretch up to one hundred feet wide. In the brutally hot Florida summers, their dappled canopies provide precious shade for a wide range of tropical plants which, without some protection from the sun, would wither and die in a matter of days. 

Contrary to popular belief, when a hurricane rolls in, the live oak does not often die from being uprooted by strong winds while standing in soaked and saturated soil.  Rather, the live oak suffers most from a hurricane when its leaves are blown off by relentless winds and the tree cannot replace these life-giving, leafy photosynthesis factories fast enough to survive the next growing season.

As I look out my window every morning at several live oaks that dominate my postage stamp of a backyard at my home along the Gulf coast of Florida, I see, in the protective, yet dappled canopy of these massive trees, an apt metaphor for the past two years. COVID-19 and all the other upheaval and chaos that have come alongside the pandemic has certainly and dramatically impacted not only my well-being but my ability to recover that well-being I once had before the world turned upside down. The canopy that once protected me from the harshest of realities around me seems to have fallen away. 

Before the pandemic rolled in and disrupted just about everything, I could see and read about those harsh realities of life -- tragedy, suffering, loss, stress, frustration, and anger.  Yet somehow I was protected from the full force of them, not so much by a hedge, but by a gentle yet dappled canopy that allowed me to clearly see the world around me but still continue to grow, mature, and thrive in spite of it. The upheaval wrought by the pandemic combined with the loss of life and the politicization of public health allowed the full force of other crises, both immediate and existential, to break through into my own reality, unfiltered and unabated. As the pandemic now gradually ebbs to endemic, there is no simple return to what was. The relentless winds of anger, frustration, stress, loss, and chaos that have been stirred up by COVID-19 and its politicized sidekicks have stripped much of the protection away.   

I have to wonder whether that live oak within me that is my life energy will recover from the storm, restoring a broad canopy that protects me from the harshest things in this world while still allowing me to see them clearly.   

I asked the live oaks in the backyard about this.  They looked at me strangely from a tangle of limbs and pruning calluses, and said-- "Well, we are over a hundred years old and there have been quite a few hurricanes that have blown through in that time... you do the math."

So except for talking to trees and hearing them talk to me in response, I think I'm going to be just fine.