A little unnervingly, everyone registered for "Religion of Trees" showed up and right on time, though we were in an out-of-the-way classroom with only a most truncated view of any trees. (You can just make out the Lang courtyard maples - if you know to look for them - through the lower window). I promptly sent them off in pairs to Washington Square Park to greet the old English elm, and when they returned we shared a cornucopia of verbal and visual responses, which allowed students to introduce themselves and their interests in a compellingly organic and, well, organic way. So much more interesting than the usual "I'm an nth year majoring in x," a feast of insights and queries from anthropology, botany, literary studies, psychology, art...
The caretakers of the elm took note of this interdisciplinary attention, too. Many students described the tree's resident squirrels. One even told of an encounter with one, as he'd come close to the great trunk and looked up only to find himself being watched. Before the squirrel scampered away, it let him - and so us - understand that, for a squirrel, able to climb and descend at will, "the trunk is a horizon."
The squirrel's eye view might be guiding for us this time, mediating between the sessile trees and what Robin Wall Kimmerer, in our first reading, calls our "herky-jerky" animal existence. ("White-Pine," 427)
