Coming Home to the Earth by Christina Trunnell

“The Shapes of Leaves” by Arthur Sze 

Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree:
our emotions resemble leaves and alive
to their shapes we are nourished. 

Have you felt the expense and contours of grief
along the edges of a big Norway maple?
Have you winced at the orange flare 

searing the curves of a curling dogwood?
I have seen from the air logged islands,
each with a network of branching gravel roads, 

and felt a moment of pure anger, aspen gold.
I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field,
a single white whooping crane in the flock. 

And I have traveled along the contours
of leaves that have no name. Here
where the air is wet and the light is cool, 

I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
I am living at the edge of a new leaf. 

As we are approaching Earth Day and celebrating the fabulous week planned at TVCC, I’ve been thinking about the earth, why we celebrate this day, and what it means to me.

That has to start in a conversation about the earth. I am not alone in the intrinsic connection I have always felt to the earth. Most of us have a place where we are able to find peace, solace, or happy remembrances of times connecting with nature. We tend to use those terms…getting away, escaping, connecting with nature…and others to categorize how we feel. I think of it a little differently. If you were to take a little time and think about where you go to unwind, relax, recharge, let go, on a regular basis, most would have some version of home that is our answer. We go home. In whatever shape or form that looks like in your everyday, humans need that space that is ours to just let go. It’s important. A vital part of our happiness. It is where we belong. It is home.

Blooms in Christina's home garden

It is that same sensation that allows us to be at peace or connect when in nature. Whether you love rocks, forests, mountain tops, rivers, deserts, caves, or oceans, you feel that innate sense of belonging when immersed and surrounded by nature. I think this is because we are truly home with the earth.

Unfortunately, in the everyday busyness of our lives, we are not immersed in it. Instead, we are overwhelmed in media, images, words, obligations, stresses. Ralph Waldo Emerson describes this as an “embarrassing variety”. In his essay on art, Emerson explains that we cannot see or even understand what we see until we stop and focus on one thing. To let ourselves fade away, detach from the rest of the distractions of the world, and absorb that object, that image, that scene is truly to see and know it. It is easy to do this in nature, because we are physically removed from the rest of our daily world.

We can breathe. We can release all that is tying us down and just be when we are surrounded by nature. We are able to let go of so much and just absorb what’s around us. We have, in a sense, come home. We are able to recharge, reconnect, find space to just be. We are home.

Christina's family hiking in Glacier National Park

For today, I want to challenge you to connect with the earth wherever you are at. It’s there, all around you. Stop and breathe it in. Take time each day this month to see and feel the nature around you. If you read and believe Emerson, your very “happiness and unhappiness” depend upon it. Without escaping where you are at, stop and observe the part of the earth that you live on in this moment. I guarantee, it has something beautiful to share with you.

Christina Trunnell is the Head of Library and Information Services at TVCC.