Tourist to native:
‘How is that?
Can it be that you speak to the trees?’
Native to tourist:
‘How is that?
Can it be that you do not speak to the trees?’

Mutual surprise of disparate cultures. One thinks the other is mad because he speaks to the trees. The other finds it absurd not to speak to them. There is no question of animistic rituals or of romantic vagaries. There is question of being close, of belonging, of communicating proportionally with life in all the shapes it takes around us under the responsible unity of a global family. To speak is to relate. And to relate is to live.

Poets and mystics talk to the trees and the mountains and the stars. And we all have something of the poet and the mystic in us. An imaginary dialogue can be realistic projection that enlivens feelings and strengthens relationships. And if that is so, we welcome such imagination. Time to learn how to talk to the trees.

The old little woman told of how when she entered a valley in her comings and goings in Cuzco land (Peru), she greeted the valley she entered and took leave of the valley she left. She gave thanks for the safe journey along the valley now left behind, and she asked permission to go in respectfully and come out safely from the valley that lay now before her. Thus she went from valley to valley, as from hand to hand, in the ceaseless company of friendly nature through unending grounds. If we knew how to talk to the trees, maybe we would not feel so lonely.

Good gardeners converse with their plants. They understand their feelings, their fears, their joys. They know how to encourage a withering stem, and how to compliment a blooming flower. And when they do so, they open themselves to their own feelings, mirror their own situations, lighten their trials and double their joys. A dialogue always benefits both the partners in it.

In Cape City in South Africa I stayed with an Indian family who showed me the plants they had at home. One of them had withered and was drooping. They placed it on a table in the middle of the room, the whole family gathered round it, they all joined hand to hand, talked to the plant, showed it their love, and prayed for it. They repeated the ceremony several days. The plant slowly stood up and became green again.

To the native, talking to the tree comes so naturally that it is unthinkable for him that the others may not do it. We have definitely lost something of the pristine innocence that knew itself kin to all creation, and as such could work and talk in communion with all created things. We would blush if someone found us talking aloud to a tree. Our friends would smile at us. The sense of shame inhibits us and deprives us of the spontaneity that once was ours. We knew how to speak with the trees, and we have forgotten the language.