Some years ago I was invited to “Flight of the Mind,” a women’s writing retreat held at a center on the McKenzie River in Oregon. I arrived in Eugene feeling totally inadequate as a writer, and so beleaguered by an ongoing chronic medical condition. My flight was late in arriving; the van that I intended to take to the retreat center had long departed. I also discovered that my suitcase had been lost along the way. Not an auspicious beginning.
I was stymied. I started asking myself why in the world I was there, what business did I have, being in the company of some of these fine writers and what was I thinking. I had dragged my half-sick, weary body half way across the country. I did not know a soul. I did not know how to get to the retreat center. And I had no clean clothes. At least I had my meds and a toothbrush.
Somehow, I got myself together, went outside and asked a couple of cab drivers about how far the center was (more than an hour away) and how much they would charge (a lot). I hadn’t anticipated needing a lot of cash. Finally, one man offered to take me to the center and we negotiated a price. He was a strange sort. About 30 minutes into the drive I began to feel very uneasy, realizing that no one knew where I was, and that if this man had malice in his heart, I was in trouble. I started praying the Jesus Prayer, and hoping the center would soon appear. When we arrived, he tried to charge more than the negotiated price, but I did not have the cash, so he had to turn away, sour and grumpy, cursing and muttering as he climbed back in his cab.
Then I looked up, and one of the main sponsors, Ursula LeGuin, was coming toward me, arms outstretched in welcome. She said, “We have been looking for you.” So, I realized, I really wasn’t so alone. I was in a company of friends yet to be discovered. She guided me inside to check in, helped me find my room and gave me a schedule. I met the women who were going to be in the same poetry writing group as me. I got some dinner and went to bed feeling received and oddly blessed.
Over the next several days I sat by the wild McKenzie River and listened to her song. I hiked in the meadows and hills and met banana slugs for the first time. I went to my poetry writing sessions and wrote some decent first drafts. One day, as I was walking across a parking lot, I noticed that a huge cypress tree was oddly shaped. I walked over to take a look and realized that the tree had been blasted by lightning many years ago. Part of the trunk and the remainder of a big branch were blackened. Yet from the other part of the trunk, new growth had happened. It was almost absurd! I started laughing—to behold that new and renewed life reaching up, growing new branches, all a little off center but strong nevertheless.
That tree felt like a kind of annunciation—a direct address from God, saying, “Part of the reason I brought you here was to realize that you aren’t dead till you are dead. So get back to living.”
A couple of days later, I ran into Ursula again in the parking lot. She asked how my experience at the retreat had been, and I decided to tell her about the tree. She looked toward it, listened to my account and said, “I’ve been coming here for years. I hadn’t noticed that tree. Thank you. I needed that.”
These poems sprang from that encounter with “Madre arbol” (Mother Tree). When I wrote them it felt like I was taking dictation. I have come back to them in my 70s, in part to remember that even when that lightning bolt strikes out of nowhere, and the smell of burning is in the air, sometimes what comes next is renewed life. I offer of them to you, dear reader, for your reflection.
~ Rev. Mary Earle ©
