Ode: A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea.
I grew up in the Northwest, with the good fortune to be surrounded by stately, elegant evergreens. I’ve lived in tropical climates, where graceful palms brushed the sky, dropping coconuts and corrugated fronds. I’ve experienced the grandeur of redwood forests, mists swirling between the massive trunks. Beech and pine, sycamore and hemlock, maple and oak, apple and ohia — I love them all. But decades of living in the mountains of Colorado leave me hopelessly devoted to aspen trees.
Seeking the muse, I went for a late afternoon ski the other day. As I stood in a grove of aspens, listening to a solitary squeak of one tree against another, watching their leafless branches sway, a lone snowshoer clomped by. I had to know. “What do you love most about aspens?” I asked. She looked at me, smiling. “You feel like you can breathe when you’re around them,” she said. A pause. “There’s just nothing like them.”
I have been a chronic journal keeper for most of my life. Recorded in the many thousand pages are countless musings, heartaches, and joys. But one of my favorite things has always been to create ‘verbal snapshots’ of beautiful places. Some have been right outside my door, some on the other side of our planet. But season after season, aspens are always with me. Here’s a little tour through some of them.
Summer
Aspens’ verdant green
A chorus of energy
Chlorophyll surges
A slight breeze ripples the water and the leafy, deep green aspens that guard the ridgeline across from me. Two beautiful sunlit deer move across a far slope, their breakfast undisturbed by my presence. The mule’s ear sunflowers and vibrant purple penstemon wave gently from these dark soils. I recently helped scatter some of a dear friend’s remains here. As a group of us stood singing at the water’s edge, hands chalky with ash, our voices rose and harmonized with the rustling leaves, the movement of water.
Exuberance reigns!
Deep green leaves drip on white bark
Eyes streak monsoon tears
I’m sitting in a graffiti-full aspen grove. My back rests on the cool, smooth surface of a chosen tree, and I’m contemplating why aspens’ pristine bark makes some people grab their pocket knives. Carved into the porcelain canvas I’ve seen countless hearts and initials, and drawings of horses, elk, and birds. I’ve seen crude renditions of body parts (both male and female), no doubt left by the lonely sheepherders who were some of the first to leave their mark in our local forests. These arborglyphs were one way that nomads connected with others, and I recognize that some of them are important historical records of land use in an area. That said, I much prefer seeing the telltale triplet scars left by a climbing bear’s claws. Do the lovestruck carvers ever return once the stars have fallen from their eyes, wishing they could erase their declaration, kind of like a tattoo gone wrong?
The pale, thin bark of an aspen tree contains chloroplasts, which means it can photosynthesize, making it one of the few deciduous trees that do not solely rely on leaves for photosynthesis. The white powder on the bark can act as a sunscreen with an SPF of 5. The bark also has salicylic acid, which has a similar effect to aspirin and can act as a pain reliever; this is why you may see deer and elk munching away on it during the painful months of antler growth. In addition, the white powder contains a good quantity of naturally occurring yeast. Some say that a sourdough mix kicked off with this powder will add some leavening and a great flavor to bread, pancakes, and other baked goods!
Autumn
One spot of yellow
Splashed amongst green leaves,
white trunks
Autumn says hello
I sit with my back against an aspen, golden carpet beneath me, gleaming orange, yellow, and green jewels above. I was lured to these stands by their crazy combination of ochre and deep emerald, umber and claret, and turmeric and sunshine. In the stillness, a crow caws, a branch drops, and a few leaves fall. The glowing symphony seems to hold its breath, the music pianissimo, yet shimmering towards a harmonious, glorious crescendo. These magnificent days will pass and morph, death of a sort is imminent, but this transition is enlivening. The tree right before me looks like a tuning fork, its tines barely quivering.
Golden cathedrals
Luminous limbs stretch skyward
A single leaf spins
You always think there will be another autumn, and that which isn’t experienced this year will be there for you next year. It’s not good to count on this — life is revealing this ever more frequently. These dancing, dappled shadows, these leaves that are whirling and spinning as the warm breeze twirls them off their branches — don’t ever take them for granted. I want to inhale this world, embody it, bottle it, and store it so I can taste a spoonful when the darkness comes.
Aspens cover five million acres (or 20%) of Colorado’s forested land. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is the state’s only widespread, native, deciduous tree and can be found from 6,500 to 11,500 feet in elevation, particularly on the Western Slope. Their uniqueness comes from leaf stems that are square, rather than round, thus giving the leaves their characteristic trembling when touched by even the slightest breeze.
Winter
Twin tracks intersect
the parallel shafts of sun
Aspen forest ski
Skiing through aspens feels geometric. Parallel tracks zig and zag upwards through zebra stripes. Ivory trunks stretch skyward; dark lines of moisture trickle down — striations of shadow and light beckon through the arch of a supple bowed tree. We accept the invitation and ski underneath.
Naked limbs and twigs
Filigree against blue sky
Mother Nature’s lace
Aspis, the aspen’s Greek name, means shield. Amongst the Celts, its lightweight wood was indeed favored for making shields. These buffers were more than mere physical barriers between warrior and enemy. People believed they had magical qualities to safeguard the bearer from psychic and physical harm.
I learned that Scottish Highlanders thought the aspen was a magical tree, and that an aspen leaf placed under the tongue would make the bearer more eloquent. Who knows what rapturous words I could have written had I the foresight to experiment with this! But now snow covers the ground; any found leaf is a desiccated shadow of its former self.
Unfortunately, some large aspen groves are also ghosts of what they used to be. ‘Sudden aspen decline’ is a phenomenon that has stricken stands across the country. A thin shield of bark has always made stands susceptible to parasites and disease, and it’s suspected that drought and warmer temperatures are making the trees more stressed and vulnerable. Crowns thin, branches die, and bark takes on an orange hue. Foragers eat the young shoots, and entire aspen communities can collapse. Heartbreaking. Their infamous ‘eyes’ (formed when branches fall off) watch as we humans change the course of life on our planet.
Spring
Enchanted aspens
Bird song drifts amidst green glow
Springtime jewels shimmer
I wandered over the snow and numerous little creeks and rivulets, past the first glacier lilies and tightly sewn spring beauties, with the chorus of geese and robins as soundtrack. Earlier, a young moose was staring at me in the meadow. The aspens thrum with the promise of spring. The velvet earnestness of the first willows brought tears to my eyes.
Grandfather aspen
Scarred from decades of bear claws
Tiny leaves, new life
Deep piles of snow lie in the dark forest, while the stark aspen trunks, poking out from their tree wells, hold the secret of sap running and leaves burgeoning. The aspens by our camp are old, multi-limbed sentinels. When I hugged one of these grandfathers last night, my arms barely reached around it. I forest bathed, breathing in that dusty aspen bark smell, a little spicy, a little musky. This evening, we went on a walk of wonder — red buttons of churt everywhere, spring mushrooms, a deer’s skeleton, a wonderland of delicate, pink-veined spring beauties, and nodding glacier lilies. All around, the aspens silently unfurled their brilliant emerald gems while a woodpecker tapped a rhythm.
The sun-loving aspen is noted for its ability to regenerate vegetatively by shoots and suckers arising along its long lateral roots. This root sprouting results in many genetically identical trees, which, in aggregate, are called a clone. All the trees in a clone have identical characteristics. Because of this sprouting response, aspen is often the first to colonize forest clearings, burns, or other disturbed sites.
Whether you walk or ski for miles to experience the glory of these beautiful trees or are stopped in your tracks by an extravagantly multi-colored roadside copse, take a moment, take a breath. Listen to the soft wind chime of their trembling leaves. Appreciate the spectrum of their bark, their foliage, their bare branches in winter. You’ll be better for it. And I encourage you to try a leaf under your tongue if you have an important message to deliver — those Scots might have been onto something!