Derek Sheffield

Language isn’t a perfect tool (if “tool” is even the word), but it seems to be the best we have. I resisted this notion in my younger days, more interested in what kind of knowing may come before words arrive. Nowadays though, language feels like leaves and I am the tree. And when those leaves leave me, well, more soil to grow in. To some extent, I live by how language can, in R.P. Blackmur’s words, “expand the stock of available reality.” When I came across the Japanese term, “shinrin-yoku,” which means “forest bathing,” I began to understand why I, a certified bird nerd, have so often been content to let warbles go nameless and bright feathers unseen. My desire then was to more simply be in the forest and attend to the quieter voices inside stem, bark, heartwood, and sapwood. And have you ever noticed how aspen leaves can flutter even when your skin tells you the air is still? These shimmers and trembles mesmerize the way the flames of our campfires do. They are good company and have been for longer than we are capable of imagining. No wonder we bring plants indoors and call them “houseplants.” No wonder so many people took up gardening during the pandemic. It was less about food and more about survival of the connected, our need to feel kinship through the language of nature.