A Time To Plant

As the rain fell today, I thought of the trees I helped plant in Hamlin Beach State Park on Saturday during a statewide event held for New York State Parks called I Love My Park Day. As an initiative to improve the air quality of our planet, the park leadership has worked to plan trees in an area of the park that would become a small forest if the young saplings don't become food for the deer first.

Trees are the lungs of our planet as they regulate the gas exchange in the atmosphere surrounding Earth and provide us much of the oxygen that we need to live vibrant lives. In planting some fifteen to twenty young trees, I began to feel connected. I often feel connected to life when I give of myself to others, but when giving of myself to the planet I felt myself look up to the sky and down to the ground beneath my feet. I was becoming part of more than humanity, I was becoming alive amongst everything that lives.  This was different than paying attention to cows when helping them go through a routine milking. This was giving life to something new that had the potential to change the lives of many animals and people.

In a rural setting along Lake Ontario, trees are homes to animals and closer to the water they protect the land. In planting trees,  I had moments of connection with the land. It had been wet and muddy from recent rains making the planting a messy, yet enriching process. The clean soil surrounding roots that would take in this water showed me the base of life for these young plants much the way we can form connections with those who we have lived and grown with as they form our base and help us know or core or heart.

Planting ourselves in life is a hard process in a world moving frequently with little space for rest. Sometimes to survive we have to plant things in our hearts and our souls if we want to be deeply rooted in life while accepting the flux of movement of the human race. The trees of love, hope, peace, charity, and empowerment can be nurtured by our actions as people are lifted to hold each other as one family. I will write more about experiences that can only be felt by the heart and by the soul of life as the things cannot be felt by the mind once they begin growing in our lives in future posts. It is my hope we can nurture the soil of our lives through our work with what we can bring to life.

Trees growing in the rain. (Note: This is not Hamlin Beach State Park)