Oak
This post originally published in November of 2023. Amidst a very busy month, I’ve been working on a new piece but it’s not quite finished yet. In the meantime - enjoy Oak, a piece that helped me to make more space for the shedding and loss that comes with being a living organism in the heart of autumn.
Reminders for Humans is a monthly series that explores a natural phenomena, and how I’m applying its wisdom to my own human life. I’m a scientist by training, and a gushy poet by nature. Expect both.
There is something about November that always just makes me want to die.
I keep this to myself because it tends to make people jumpy and nervous, which I can understand. But it’s also true. November happens every year, and every year from the beginning to the end of it, I inexplicably lose the will to live. This has only been happening for my entire life, but it still somehow always comes as an unwelcome surprise. Maybe your November is January or March or July. I have a hunch we all have a November; a time during which we lose the energy required to exist.
When I say lose the will to live, I do not mean that I concoct an intentional plan to die. I mean I suddenly and mysteriously have a lot of symptoms which, when combined, amount to having the vitality of a pumpkin dropped off on the curb after Halloween, left to slowly rot into itself. I spend the month feeling depressed and tired, deeply unimpressed with myself, extremely annoyed that I am still depressed and tired, and consistently looking for a horizontal surface to lay on.
My mysterious symptoms include a minimum of ten hours of sleep a night; eyes glazing over with regularity; no interest in exercise of any kind; an almost complete lack of appetite; soreness and general malaise; boredom with work and play and friends and art; laying on the floor staring at the ceiling; reading but being exhausted by it; listening to music but being exhausted by that too; watching TV but barely watching. And still somehow being exhausted. Wanting to want something- anything- because that would mean that I was still a functioning human, but alas - not wanting anything at all besides silence and a place to lay down. I imagine falling asleep and waking up three months later, which actually sounds delicious.
Admittedly, November has also historically punched me in the heart, so there’s a good chance that this time of the year alone makes my insides brace for impact. The memories I can’t always narrate, but that my body seems to store, come back to life like ghosts right about now. Wisps of the cyclical depression that took over me when it became clear that I’d be stuck for longer in a house I did not want to be in. Ever since, the shitty stuff always seems to bottle itself up until November rolls around, and then, BOOM. Breakups, depressive episodes, infections, illness, family spats, surprise expenses, surprise tragedies, surprise surgeries. Sickness, dying, death. Loss and loss and loss.
Meanwhile, the outside world could not be more overjoyed.
Leaf peeping! Pumpkin Spice! Sweater weather! Chilly days! Spoopy season! Halloween costumes! Football! Inflatable lawn decorations! Black Friday and holiday shopping and deals deals deals and Cyber Monday and get ready for Christmas! The juxtaposition of my insides to this outside world only makes me a more exhausted grump and is probably the reason why I’ve worn the same Halloween costume for the last 5 years. I’m tired. Isn’t anyone else tired?
I walk the dog around the park every afternoon and notice how the tall old trees look a little more colorful and sparse each day. Their leaves say goodbye one by one. We crunch through them on sidewalks. I wonder if the trees feel the same way I do on the inside. I wonder if they’re confused why everyone is so excited to watch them die.
To Fall Down From
There is a prehistorically giant oak tree on my family’s property. I don’t have a clue how to measure how large it is besides to say it might be taller than a lot of buildings I’ve seen. The kind of tree you measure circumference by walking its perimeter, not by reaching your arms around. It’s in a place that is wet and green and quiet except for the chorus of forest around it.
By volume, trees are mostly water. Their rough exterior of bark helps to keep the outside world and its varying temperatures at bay, yet it’s completely miraculous that a giant being of mostly water doesn’t turn into a popsicle each winter when the temperatures are below freezing. Somehow this water tower doesn’t freeze solid and keel over.
Not only do trees prepare for and survive the winter, but they then emerge from it with the innate readiness and programming to grow. Right away. No therapy needed. I am fascinated by this and also jealous.
Deciduous is the scientific name for the species of trees that lose their leaves during the course of the year. They live in the parts of the world where the climate is temperate and experiences all four seasons. The word deciduous comes from latin roots (surprise) de- meaning “from”, and cadere - meaning “to fall down”. Deciduous: to fall down from. Each year, the tree goes about its business of living: growing new leaves; collecting, storing and feeding on simple sugars and water; converting carbon dioxide into oxygen; growing a canopy of leaves; absolutely loving life. And then it goes about its business of dying, or technically- going dormant. Dormant is the state that trees enter during the winter. Not dead. Just dormant.
Apparently, to force a tree to evade dormancy is proven to be bad for the tree’s health, and ultimately dormancy is what keeps trees alive in the short and long term. A deciduous tree or plant that is not allowed to enter dormancy for a few months per year will have a lifespan that is drastically reduced.
Several interesting phenomena happen inside of a tree during the change of seasons, which allow it to survive the freezing temperatures.
Once the tree senses the days shortening, it begins to release a hormone called ABA (short for abscisic acid) which is a chemical messenger that regulates stress in plants. Unlike animals, who can move and flee when they encounter stressful stimuli from the world, plants are literally rooted in one place. They rely on adaptations like the ABA hormone to help them survive stressful events and changes, and shorter amounts of daylight is stressful for deciduous trees. ABA is released and becomes concentrated right at the juncture where the leaf stem connects to the tree branch, and its presence effectively suspends growth in the leaf, and tells its cells to stop dividing: because growing is a process that requires energy, and the tree’s main source of energy is waning. In this complex way, the tree is taking 2 steps back in order to take 3 steps forward. It is recognizing that, to continue functioning and growing like it has been, while living in this new and dark reality, would be suicidal.
Next, ABA and other chemicals and enzymes, like ethylene and auxins and cellulases, trigger what’s called abscission, which is the scientific term for the process of leaves’ self-destruction and then detachment from a tree. Now that the leaf’s connection to water and nutrients and the rest of the tree has been cut off, green chlorophyll in leaves breaks down. Cellulase enzymes deconstruct the structural integrity of the leaves, turning the cellulose that gives the leaf thickness and density, into glucose: simple sugars which are then stored within the tree as food. Around this time, it becomes obvious to anyone who sees the leaf that the chemistry within it has changed drastically. Depending on the species, leaves shift from green to some combination of yellow, orange, and red as the fundamental character, the innate infrastructure of it, disintegrates. Water evaporates from them quickly, leaving them brittle and weak, and it’s only a matter of time before letting go of the branch altogether is easier than holding on to it.
Harvest
Here is something I learned.
In the time before agrarian society, when groups of people forged and hunted and gathered in disparate but communal groups, this time of year was not considered harvest as we know it now. Not really. Harvest became much more distinct after the agricultural revolution, when humans created villages in places of the landscape that were ideal for settlement, and where crops and livestock could be gathered and grown intentionally to support the community throughout the year. But before we had proto-cities, we had only designated spaces to gather in the larger landscape; the landscape that was traversed by families and groups and tribes to find the elements required for survival: food, water, shelter. While there were not matching rows of farmland or grain at these gathering spaces, in some parts of the globe there were herds of livestock- sheep, cattle, goats- that were managed and moved by shepherds.
All throughout the year, these shepherds would watch over the herd, walk with them for miles to lead them towards the highland pastures and lush grasses, where they could wander and graze. They kept guard as the herd grew in size, with calves and lambs born each spring, and watched as these babies grew stronger and larger. They guided the herd from danger and predators and poor weather.
And when the days began to get colder and shorter, when the sunlight shrank minute by minute each day, the entire ecosystem picked up on these cues. Shorter, colder days signaled to all that winter was approaching. And for animals that don’t hibernate, this is their annual reminder that the bounty of the spring and summer, and the availability of food, would soon shrink to almost nothing. For shepherds, their new reality was that their herd of livestock would need just as much food as they’d required all year, but now without the available supply. Not only did these people have to feed themselves with whatever food and sustenance they could either store or continuously hunt and gather throughout the next four to six frozen months, but they were also responsible for feeding the herd with only a fraction of what they needed to survive.
The solution that remained for shepherds, who had diligently raised and protected their flock of animals all year round, was to slaughter them.
If they tried to keep them all, they’d run out of food midway through the winter and put the entire herd at risk of starvation. Not to mention, put themselves and their community at risk of starving, too. It was an impossible situation, but it was also survival.
During the fall, shepherds and villages were forced to choose which of their darling livestock to cull, so that they could see another spring. The byproduct of this savage equation was an abundance of meat that needed to go somewhere. Food that needed to be eaten. So it was.
So harvest, this time of plenty and abundance and a cornucopia overflowing with sustenance, was owed to ritualistic, heartbreaking, matter-of-fact, loss.
This is not the story we hear when we’re taught the lesson of the pilgrims’ first winter in America and the origin of the Thanksgiving holiday. I was taught that this time is one of celebration, of abundance, of collaboration and community, of happily collecting the last bit of berries and roots and ears of corn that are still ripe and alive before the frost takes over. A time of gathering, of connecting, of expressing thanks and gratitude for the blessing to eat, to enter the winter with a full belly.
I still believe all of this to be a true and beautiful description of fall. I also wish that I had known the full picture sooner: that this time of giving thanks was often preceded by death and loss. Arguably, an entire years-worth. That the reason there was so much food in the first place was because our ancestors had to chop away a fraction of their herd in order to survive. Because they didn’t just have to come face to face with wild death; they also wielded it themselves.
Rituals of Loss
Ancient peoples ritualized the changing of the seasons from summer to fall to winter by mirroring and memorializing the slow death happening around them. Many religions do the same.
In the fall, there are multiple holidays devoted to the recognition of loss. In its earliest versions, Halloween was one of them. All Souls Day for Christians, the Day of the Dead (Dia De Los Muertos) in Mexican culture, Samhain (pronounced Sowen) for pagans and Gaelic societies. These were dedicated days between the fall and winter equinoxes that cultures around the world gathered in the name of loss. In the name of grief. These were times that the world of the living could honor, recognize, remember, and connect to the world of the dead. (Whether or not you believe in this kind of thing - of connecting with the dead and departed - is besides the point.) You’ll notice these holidays happen weeks before Thanksgiving. Which leads me to believe that, historically speaking, the time for grief and loss is put squarely before the time for gratitude and giving thanks. The point is that for thousands of years, societies around the globe completely unconnected with one another, somehow all carved out and designated this same chunk of the year to notice what had been lost, and hold those losses together in community.
Fallen yet valuable
Another component of the tree’s transition through dormancy also has to do with its leaves, but after they’ve fallen.
What a nuisance leaves are.
Every year, they fall and fall and fall. They litter the ground, cover the sidewalks, get clomped on and stuck on the bottom of shoes and dragged into the house. They require entire contraptions and tools in order to get them organized and far away, and then a few days later, there’s more. Because, let’s face it, leaves don’t like to be arranged into piles and stay put. No, leaves love to fly around in the wind and hit people and cars and dogs on leashes and houses and storefront windows. They love to clog up storm drains. They like chitter-chattering like tambourines along the street with the wind at their back. They like to get soaked with rain and stick to each other and somersault around in funny little flops while you attempt to rake them into submission. They seem to have a great time.
Every autumn, we are equally as determined to love the leaves when they are on the tree as we are to get them the hell out of here as soon as they fall.
What a metaphor.
Assuming we don’t rake up the leaves and move them somewhere else (somewhere where their insulting, unseemly existence can be tolerated!) what happens?
Leaves are made up of cellulose and carbon and sugars and water and fibers. They were grown by the very same tree, using the nutrients from the soil and the water in the trunk, and the carbon in the air, and the rays of sun. They have not turned rancid or evil or inert just because they have fallen. There is value to the leaves, even when they are dead. Even when they have fallen onto the ground and littered the roots and the grass and soil and flowers around the tree, and have otherwise made a big giant mess, they are valuable. Almost equally so, because it’s this return to the Earth which allows for these little streamers of vitality to compost and break themselves down into pieces; to return the nutrients that they’ve borrowed back to the soil.
Leaf litter returns nutrients and minerals and organic matter to the ground, to be used again in the spring, and it also provides a protective layer of organic material to the earth and plants that surround the tree. When frost comes, leaves provide a kind of buffer from the snow to the ecosystem within the soil. They’re habitat for insects and miniature creatures, who stay hidden below their sheets of protection. Their wet slopping layers no longer somersault around, but interlock like lasagna noodles holding in the moisture below. The leaves feed the world below them, simply by existing there- simply by letting themselves be lost.
Scientifically and symbolically, what the tree has lost, outgrown, and let go of is also what feeds its very foundation, and prepares it for whatever it will become next. Another great metaphor.
More and more municipalities around the world are encouraging homeowners to leave the leaves (ha) once they fall during fall (ha). And when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. The leaves on a tree are closed-loop system: they grow from the nutrients in the soil, then they return them, then they grow again. Leaves are built-in, never-ending, fertilizer. Trees have to be completely dumbfounded by the humans around them busily raking up their leaves and moving them away, only to apply Miracle Grow to the soil in the spring. They’re probably like, “Hello?? I already did that?”
What a nuisance leaves are.
What a nuisance loss is.
Every year, it just keeps happening. Leaves keep falling. Humans keep losing. Belongings and people and ideas and relationships and dreams. Love and new hope and silent wishes and pets and community and a favorite water bottle and forgotten plans and new habits and family and sparkly exciting connection and normalcy and the way things were. Every year! When will it end? It won’t! The leaves keep growing and then falling. We keep loving and trying and striving and losing anyway. It’s ridiculous!
It’s exhausting to lose something you’ve grown. It’s exhausting to pick it all up, over and over again.
In November, the top hemisphere of Earth is reckoning with death.
With what has Death already taken, already snatched away without cause. What has been lost already, through no fault of your own. And what has been lost, bitterly, by your own volition. It’s deciding what else to lose in order to survive the winter. What should be culled and composted in order to feed us during our dormancy? What should be sacrificed and eaten? What will we trade with Death in order to create something new?
So, what has been lost?
I am asking me, and I am asking you.
One by one they turn color. One by one they fall away.
I try to make light of what happens inside of me during November. I call it the November Blues or say something about how it just makes me want to die (so silly!) or explain that I don’t like the holiday season or I’d rather hibernate through it. But during my five-millionth attempt at wrangling my symptoms away, by intellectualizing and then filing them into Trauma or Personality or Circumstance folders, a new curiosity bubbled up slowly and popped at the surface.
What if everything else feels the same way I do during fall?
What if it is literally natural to confront loss right about now, and what if it’s also natural for that reckoning to feel really shitty? What if there wasn’t something wrong with my insides? What if the billions of deciduous trees on the surface of this planet also feel a little bit like: Fuck November. I’m taking a nap.
When I think about it this way, I would argue it’s unnatural not to be affected by loss. Whether you’re a soft squishy human with a big sensitive heart or a hardwood tree as tall as some buildings.
I don’t want to go off my rocker and start hypothesizing about the feelings inside of trees. I won’t pretend that anthropomorphizing them passes as scientific, by any means. It’s a little bold, and frankly a little presumptuous, but it helps me to imagine that the prehistoric, towering trees might also kind of feel like they want to die. Maybe they too are exhausted by what has been lost; by what they’ve worked to grow and then surrendered to let fall away. They only got six months together. Wouldn’t you be sad, too?
I’m trying not to close my eyes to the leaves falling off of me. I am trying to watch them change and wither and drop away from me without looking away or making a joke. I am trying to pick them up, notice their unique corners and color and crunch, and count how many there are. How many losses and goodbyes of various shapes and sizes there really are in a year, in a life. Look at all these leaves! Look at all these leaves. No wonder I am tired. No wonder I am sad.
I am attempting to not turn this depression into an enemy I need to conquer. I am considering what it might feel like to share communion with a new group during this time of the year, a group of silent stoic living things that are losing pieces of themselves in order to survive. Losing things and letting them lay at their feet without shame, without blame, without freezing. Without calling themselves defective for being saddened by their loss.
Take note. Try not to rake your leaves away and out of sight.
They want to somersault and tambourine the streets. They want to clog up your drains and get clomped into your house. They want to be seen and loved and mourned before they are gone forever.
Give them your attention.
Thank you for reading Reminders for Humans during your one, singular, (relatively) short life. I’m currently traveling in South America, on a voyage of sorts to remember my own humanity. More on that to come. In the meantime, I’m so grateful for this community of people who give a shit enough about some stranger on the internet’s musings about existentialism and loss and biology to read these pieces.
Thank you for being here.
Xoxo
- Sarah