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Trees
from the book, Wandering
by Herman Hesse
For me, trees have always been the most
penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in
forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are
like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness,
but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest
boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose
themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing
only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own
form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than
a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked
death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous,
inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the
struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity
stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks
withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest
and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in
continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak
to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not
preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the
ancient law of life.
A tree says: a kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a
thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal
mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the
smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was
made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing
about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year
spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care
for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out
of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives
any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at
me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let
God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious
because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day
lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is
within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear
trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a
long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a
matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a
longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It
leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death,
every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand
uneasy before our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts,
long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are
wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned
how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike
hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how
to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except
what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
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