Walnut Trees and Property
Early October and the trees are beginning to drop their leaves. From our kitchen window, you can see a line of walnut trees that have volunteered themselves along the backyards of our neighbors. Aside from a few exceptions, there are very few fences on our block. One of our neighbors raised six kids here and remembers - a few decades ago - when 40 children lived in the area. But even though there are few fences, there are a few invisible markers of property lines - the walnut trees, for example.
Trees grow in a variety of ways here - there are the purpose-planted ones, but there are also those that volunteer themselves, grown from wind-dispersed or squirrel-carried seeds. These second sort of trees cluster near property lines, the blurred margins of our lawns, the places at which our expectations soften a little.
Last week, Robin Kimmerer spoke about enlarging the circle of care that defines our understanding of person and citizen; a move, she suggested, to think of 'we the people' not in an exclusive sense but in an inclusive one. It's interesting for me to look at the houses in Syracuse - we live in a city that was built before us, we try on its streets and boulevards and buildings for size, alter and mend and make anew as circumstances permit or require. But it's interesting to look at the houses and to think about how certain assumptions about 'we' - the relations of care and kin - are woven into the fabric of our cities. [This isn't, of course, a novel observation; see Dolores Hayden.] It's easy, of course, to look at the human things of the city - fences, driveways, sidewalks - and to read the kinds of relationship that seek to shape.
But the world is bigger than human intention - hence the walnut trees volunteering their way along our shared yards, growing at the margins of property, at once a marker of our lives and a reminder of something other.
[The reason for these - in returning to work on the book, I've noticed the ways that I feel stuck in my arguments, fiddling with old words instead of writing new ones. Part of the goal in writing something other is to cultivate that sense of curiosity and attention, a richer description of the world.]
Trees grow in a variety of ways here - there are the purpose-planted ones, but there are also those that volunteer themselves, grown from wind-dispersed or squirrel-carried seeds. These second sort of trees cluster near property lines, the blurred margins of our lawns, the places at which our expectations soften a little.
Last week, Robin Kimmerer spoke about enlarging the circle of care that defines our understanding of person and citizen; a move, she suggested, to think of 'we the people' not in an exclusive sense but in an inclusive one. It's interesting for me to look at the houses in Syracuse - we live in a city that was built before us, we try on its streets and boulevards and buildings for size, alter and mend and make anew as circumstances permit or require. But it's interesting to look at the houses and to think about how certain assumptions about 'we' - the relations of care and kin - are woven into the fabric of our cities. [This isn't, of course, a novel observation; see Dolores Hayden.] It's easy, of course, to look at the human things of the city - fences, driveways, sidewalks - and to read the kinds of relationship that seek to shape.
But the world is bigger than human intention - hence the walnut trees volunteering their way along our shared yards, growing at the margins of property, at once a marker of our lives and a reminder of something other.
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| Green Lakes State Park, August 2019 |
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