As a published author of fictional works, I have often been asked the question ‘where do you get your ideas?’ The answer contains key elements related to listening to the world, to ways of seeing, and of ‘being’ in nature. This does not mean I write nature-based stories – it means that if my character goes outside, I go with them… and often ‘as’ them. In this context I have taken long walks beside riverbanks, sat barefoot by lakes, wandered… and sometimes ran, through dense forests. In all these psychogeographic excursions I have learnt how much places have to say, and how powerful their connections can be to ideas, imagination, and emotion. It is also, through these wanderings, that I have at times crossed those permeable boundaries between gathering material for fictional purposes and the more personal, intuitive experiences that trace a path to wellbeing.
This article explores one such shift, a conscious melding with trees – one tree in particular – where I identify this connection with nature not only in the context of wellbeing, but the wider potential for an engagement with trees to form part of my teaching pedagogy. In identifying such possibilities, I further explore how these roots might extend not just to my own students, but perhaps to colleagues, external professionals, and even to whole institutions. Such musings began at a conference one golden September, when a group of like-minded teaching practitioners met and shared contemplative practices. It seemed clear it is not only time for a change, but there is already a gathering readiness, a preparedness. In this article I follow the roots of my personal experience during that conference, to see what a tree might teach.
Written by Judy Waite | PUBLISHED ON 21st June 2024 | Photo by Getty Images in association with Unsplash
Introduction
What if I don’t just look at the tree – what if I become the tree? These stray thoughts evolved from my wanderings through an ancient woodland, whilst on the Contemplative Pedagogy (CPN) conference at Dartington Hall, Totnes. Members of the CPN had met to consider mindful learning, encouraging holistic approaches within education, positioning process above product. The conference specifically targeted the embedding of confidence aligned with alternative approaches to teaching, opening up new ways of knowing at Higher Education (HE) level.
I have been teaching Creative Writing (CW) at university for over twenty years, and in this context have taught genre; character and setting development; style, structure, Point-of-View and much more. In amongst these more visible processes, I am also… and increasingly so… drawn to more mindful practices, applying holistic pedagogies to my approaches.
In addition to this, in recent years I have been evolving a different but related strand to my pedagogy, connecting CW with writing for wellbeing, and have created a module called ‘Write Yourself Well’, where CW students learn ways to adapt and shift their experience of fictional and poetic approaches, to those with benefits related to mental health.
Having spent two days at the CPN conference; workshopping, discussing, sharing ideas and practices, for one afternoon we were encouraged to spend time with ourselves, exploring the historic parkland and Grade 11 listed gardens.
As a writer, I often work alone. I like to work alone. But I stress, alone is not lonely, and in my experience time ‘with myself’ enables a deeper and richer experience – one which impacts both on ideas, and the subsequent quality of the writing. So, as I wandered in a not lonely, and certainly not cloud-like way, I was focused on mindfulness, considering the practice of silence aligned with Julia Cameron’s notions around meditative walking (Cameron, 1997). Cameron’s experiences seem to vibrate with energies, identifying how, in being out and walking in the world, ‘life sings in our circuitry as we invite it in by venturing out into it.’ However, on this day, inspired by all I had been learning from my CPN peers, I was seeking something calmer. Something slower.
I always have a notebook to hand, exploring potential for altered viewpoints – both physically and metaphysically – and on this Dartington day I deliberately deviated from the official paths that form the garden trails and official walks, and instead wove my way between bushes and trees, making, notes, observing.
As I strayed further from the ‘tourist trail’, I became increasingly aware of the presence of the trees. I was conscious I had strayed into their territory; an intrusion I needed to acknowledge.
I stopped walking to give a closer observation, scribbling notes. Capturing colours and sounds. Experiencing a silence that was not silent.
The trees seemed, initially, unremarkable. I couldn’t identify their type, but they were not the gnarly, knotted, ancient beauties that visitors flock to see. They were the backdrop to the woodland walk. Essentially non-essential.
I identified one and stepped closer. I do not know why I chose that tree. There were other, similar trees, nearby, and this, perhaps, became part of the essence of the experience. An everyday tree. An Everyman tree. A tree to be walked past, unnoticed. Until now.
The bark was a greyish brown, rough and cracked. The leaves were mottled green, tapered, growing in clusters on the branches. I went nearer. Touched the scaly bark. Pressed my cheek against it. Could it hear me breathe?
In his book The Hidden Life of Trees Wohlleben explains that trees have their own language. Not the language of sound – their creaks and sighs; the movement through their leaves, but instead the language of communication. The trees know we are there. Unable to run, or even bend out of reach, trees have their own forms of defence. They can both scent, and sense, the presence of others. From the invasion of creeping caterpillars to leaping deer, a besieged tree can release toxins to activate a bitter taste for anyone attempting to dine out on its leaves or bark. And trees do not just protect themselves. Trees operate a collectivist philosophy, living as a community, informing their ‘tribe’ that dangers are near, activating electrical signals that travel via root and fungal systems Wohlleben, 2016).
I wondered, that day at Dartington, what toxins might a human presence trigger. Can a tree differentiate between a woodsman with an axe, and a writer with a notebook?
What was ‘my’ tree communicating to the others? Was it sending messages about me?
I realised there were deeper ideas to follow, more paths less trod.
I have trained as an artist, and as a writer, and both disciplines require an enhanced level of looking.
By enhanced, I mean more specifically and deliberately focused. To be deliberately focused is, arguably, an act of defiance against our evolutionary programming. Neuroscientist David Eagleman offers a science-based approach to this, identifying how we are programmed to be blind to much basic experience. There is a difference between seeing, and consciously noticing (Eagleman, 2011). Eagleman explains that the majority of human beings live their whole lives unaware that they are seeing only a limited corner of vision at any moment (ibid., 21-24). The brain could never encode every detail, so we make choices, summarising the visual experience to ensure we see what we need to see – or what we believe we need to see (ibid., 76). However, this restricted view leads to what Merlin Coverley describes as ‘banalisation’ – by acknowledging much that is familiar our surroundings become insignificant. Monotonous (Coverley, 2018).
In this context there is a relationship between what we see, and what we know, and this connection can dilute our experience of seeing (Berger, 1972). If I know – or believe I know, what a tree looks like, do I trouble myself to look? To really look?
I connected with this ‘learning to look’ lesson some years ago. In my role as CW teacher/lecturer I once worked with a group of students – members of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). These young people were aged eight to fourteen years and were attending a series of ‘summer-school’ activities, one of which was a creative writing weekend. As their teacher for the two days, I decided to try a ‘before’ and ‘after’ exercise as a warm-up.
I first got them to write a paragraph about what it was like to be outside, sitting under a tree.
These were able young people, and they wrote copiously about the flutter of falling leaves and waving branches. Golden sunlight. Birds chirruping brightly. The writing was competent, but predictable.
I then took them outside and sat them under trees with pens and notebooks still in hand. ‘Look carefully, then write that paragraph again,’ I said. This time they wrote about the soft-grey rustlings of wood pigeons who had secrets to tell. A colony of ants who lived among an underground village beneath the roots. And one piece – my favourite – was a boy who had spotted a digger culling trees in a nearby field. He wrote about ‘his’ tree’s fear as the digger drove nearer… and nearer.
This final story seems to go to some way towards Wohlleben’s research into trees and their covert communications, reflecting my earlier musings as to whether a tree might sense not just that there is a presence, but whether the presence is benign or malign – my axeman versus the notebook-wielding author.
Regardless of the trees’ reactions, what these young people were demonstrating, overall, is how seeing can be joined with perception – letting go of cliches and the things they already knew, and instead gathering a feeling, and empathy, for a place.
This focus on perception beyond a more conscious ‘knowing’ is articulated by Coles within a process she labels ‘guided intuition.’ Coles, a poet, also steps out into the world, finding settings to absorb. Coles describes how she listens and thinks, combining both a sensitivity and awareness that is reworked into poetry at a later point in time (Coles, 2013). Coles’ level of absorption is central to an artist, and when Ursula Le Guin identifies how ‘the practice of art is that we keep looking for the outside edge’ (Le Guin, 2018) this articulates the need to keep pushing at boundaries, to find new ways of finding new ways.
The notion of an edge that is beyond our existing knowledge holds resonance for me, and my decision to stray from the guided path. To lose myself among the trees. To choose a tree to stand with and reflect on.
On that Dartington day, by aligning myself with a distinct tree I was searching for that edge, hoping to shift somewhere beyond that which felt familiar, to something both known and unknown existing in the same space.
Rick Rubin discusses how most creatures must ‘narrow their field of vision to survive’… an observation that resonates with Eagleman’s references to the brain and how we evolve, but Rubin goes on to acknowledge that the artist needs to continually widen that scope, to open the senses and harmonise with the rhythms and movements of whatever surrounds us (Rubin, 2023).
Opening my own senses, I observed that ‘my’ tree had a greyish-brown beetle, almost perfectly camouflaged, settled midway up the trunk. I considered this in the context of fictional writing. Is creative writing a form of camouflage? Is the writer mostly invisible within the story, except perhaps for a brief trembling. A slight transference in position. The suggestion of a shape. All such revelations may create a shift that alerts the eye, or mind, of the reader. The writer is seen, and potentially exposed as they slip from character to creator, their motives revealed.
To write a tree well, to be perfectly camouflaged, do I need, even, to bemore tree? To become a tree.
I wrote in my notebook:
Does the tree see me?
This for me was a shift in thinking. A shift too from Cameron’s energised altered perception, or Cole’s’ engagement with intuition.
The writer in me steps forward with something of a flourish here, ‘Ah, yes,’ they seem to say, ‘I think I can help with this.’ And this writer acknowledges (through my notes) that here is the beginning of a fairytale, or horror story, in the transition from human to tree. An enchantment. A curse. Perhaps the tree becomes the writer… or wields the axe above the writer’s head. There is scope here. New evolutions of ideas. I cannot, in the end, escape my thoughts, or my drive for storytelling, anymore than the tree can escape from a caterpillar, or a deer, or a bark-eating beetle.
I need to stay with that knowledge. The tree can’t run, but that doesn’t mean it can’t respond, adapt, and make changes. What else might I evolve, or divulge, from this tree? I consider not just my writing, but my teaching. There must be new thoughts to nurture.
Potential scenarios shift again. I have found an edge. Hopefully, it will not be toxins that run through my veins as I consider ways this might inform my pedagogy, balancing with my creative outputs. I scribble random ideas wherein I call on the tree to guide the writing of this experience, inviting it to wave its branches across the blank page of possibilities. To drop gently fluttering leaves of wisdom. To send electrical signals through my fingertips.
I reflect on how, in this way, I am working as a collective, spreading my contemplative pedagogy experiences along all the less-trod paths, reaching unexpected places where this tree might have something to say. It may have a view on the current HE level demands for pressure and performance. I can bring this to a class. Working mindfully with my students, we can step outside of the known route that leads to classes brim-full of technology, individual achievement, and goals, and go somewhere unexplored.
Can we care about the Everytree? Can we celebrate the group where you do not have to stand out?
Can we nurture the community where you do not need to be the best?
Just sometimes, to see ourselves as backdrop might be the most powerful place to be.
If this sounds somewhat fanciful in the space of academia, and within an ideology that celebrates individual success measured by students’ top grades, plus academics’ outputs and productivity, I refer to Berg and Seeber’s observations in The Slow Professor, which explores how advanced technologies are ‘missing the point’ in the context of teaching, learning, and the student experience. Research here identifies that emotions are integral to the learning experience, enhancing attentiveness and creative thinking (Berg & Seeger, 2016), and that wellbeing requires a connection with others. It is not an individual achievement (ibid., 81-82).
A connection with others seems intrinsic, but such methodologies are complex in themselves. Holistic, contemplative practices are multilayered, requiring levels of personal experiences aligned with enhanced awareness. Such awareness needs to be cultivated, and shaped for HE purposes. The University Mental Health Charter (UMHC) identifies a strategic approach for institution-wide changes that impact all aspects of mental health (Student Minds, n.d.), however it seems such knowledge will have the greatest impact if the root source comes from those experienced in specialised practices. A tree does not grow overnight, and a 300-year old oak would have evolved more deepened levels of ‘wisdom’ than any newly planted saplings. For sustainability the methodologies that support inclusive, contemplative approaches that align wellbeing with learning must stand strong in any storm. Initial specialist input opens discussion around holistic approaches to learning, so that the ‘why’ can be firmly rooted, and consequently the ‘where’ and the ‘what’ can be more easily accessed.
This access can start with small acorns of beginnings. In 2007, nature writer Robert MacFarlane, along with other authors, were shocked to learn that nature words such as bramble and conker had been culled from the Oxford Junior Dictionary (OUP, 2007). Macfarlane responded by producing a lavishly illustrated publication, The Lost Words (Macfarlane & Morris, 2017), which re-established those missing words. The banished words were back in use and could re-enter the land of the dictionary (Norbury, 2024).
MacFarlane, with illustrator Jackie Morris, had re-attached the connection between school age pupils and the language of nature… once things are named, we make associations. With association we can link to places, and the species that inhabit those places. With wellbeing alongside learning as a primary objective, it seems possible that the external campus environment per se can be viewed as integral to the sense of community, sharing, connectedness, and education.
My own institution exists within a gentle, soothing landscape. There is a pond with lily pads, and, in summer, this attracts a whirr of dragonflies. Flowers bloom through the seasons, erupting on banks and beds, near benches and between pathways. Some ancient trees have been preserved; many younger ones thrive. There is even a stone Buddha nestled amongst all this tranquillity. However, I rarely see students experiencing… really being part of… any of this external environment. The rush between lessons, catching up with friends, a general friction of anxiety around assignments and deadlines seems to dominate the airspace. During one taught session, when I once referenced Wohlleben’s statement that there are ‘more life forms in a handful of forest soil than there are humans on the planet’ (Wohlleben, 2016), a few gave a visible shudder. This was not, as I had hoped, fascinating to them, but alarming.
Yet, if we do not know the life forms are there, we will not (and in fact do not) have a language for them. They are more than lost words. They are ‘never-even-found’ words. It might be argued that, given the human propensity for the destruction of nature, it is safer for them to remain that way, but in exploring notions around ‘thinking from the feet’, Sophie Strand assures we are not separate from, but intimately anchored, to matter … to the soil , and as Strand explains, ‘… knowing that a stone is alive differently from me keeps me asking questions, keeps me humble and curious and open to surprise’ (Strand, 2022).
I align this with education. As with Wohlleben’s nameless species, approaches to learning have too often buried deep the humility, curiosity and willingness to stay open, in exchange for achievement, top ratings and all the visible signs of graded, material success.
Let me return to the potential for alternative approaches. In a quest for change there are other specialists we might learn from. Engagement with nature, and connection with those other species, both visible and hidden, might prove to be the shift. The edge. New paths less travelled.
From somewhere in the distance, I sense a trembled signal. A hushed fall of leaves. A new wind blowing. My tree is calling, in a language I am trying to learn.
I listen. I remember. I slip back to that afternoon. In the repurposing of my Dartington experience, could I reignite that sense of humility and curiosity that I experienced by my Everytree, by enabling some sort of ‘meet and greet’ with the campus environment? Trees, shrubs, and smaller plants could be identified, spoken to, befriended. We can learn their names, not their given ‘human’ labels, but the names they tell us; names from the edges of our understanding. We can get to know them and, always in search of that edge, we can shift and sift for a new awareness. We can ask them to know us.
I have stated previously that the writing experience is often performed alone, but of itself is not lonely. To explore being alone with nature, yet also known by nature, has the potential to impact positively on the sense of isolation, and inadequacy, that can be so devastating to mental health and wellbeing.
You are never alone. The trees know you are there.
Back in Dartington beside my Everytree, and mindful suddenly of timetables, group meetings and the next session, I thanked the tree and turned to go.
I would like to add that a mottled green, elegantly tapered leaf floated down and lodged on my shoulder.
A farewell. A gift. A message. Except, it didn’t happen. Not in reality, but the image formed in my writer’s mind.
I sketched this gifted message in my notebook, and carry it with me, still.
References
Berg, M. and Seeber, B. (2016) The Slow Professor. London: University of Toronto Press
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books
Cameron, J. (1996) The Vein of Gold. London: Pan Books
Coles, K. (2013) Forward, Wayward, The Writer in the World’s Text, At Large. Research Methods in Creative Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Contemplative Pedagogy Network
Contemplative Pedagogy Network | Exploring the role of contemplative teaching and learning in higher education accessed 20/03/24
Coverley, M. (2018) Psychogeography. Harpenden: Oldcastle Books
Eagleman, D. (2011) Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Edinburgh: Canongate
Le Guin, U. (2018) Dreams Must Explain Themselves. London: Hatchette (Kindle Edition)
Norbury, K. (2 October, 2017) The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris review – sumptuous | Poetry | The Guardian accessed 23/03/2023
OUP (2007) Oxford Junior Dictionary. Oxford University Press
Rubin, R. (2023) The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Edinburgh: Canongate
Strand, S. (2022) The Flowering Wand. Vermont: Inner Traditions
Student Minds (n.d.) University Mental Health Charter University Mental Health Charter – Student Minds Hub accessed 23/03/24
Wohlleben, P. (2016) The Hidden Life of Trees. London: Harper Collins
JUICE 