First Nature Observation

First Nature Observation

On my nature observation, I walked around TCU’s campus for a bit trying to find something that captured the serenity that I enjoy experiencing best when in nature. I found it in this tree. Located in front of Jarvis Hall, it is unlike any other tree I have seen on TCU’s campus before. As I was walking around to find a subject to observe, I realized I rarely look away from my phone or the path in front of me in my hurried walks to class. So, there could well be more trees of this kind and I just have not noticed before. I reflect now that I ought to slow my pace from time to time and take in more of my everyday surroundings, because there is much more to take in than a first glance suggests. On campus it feels as though everything is familiar, and the trees are all in their preplanned spots, and I am aware of all that is there. But taking in this moment has showed me I am mistaken. 

I am not familiar enough with trees to know what kind this one is, and it is of a kind that I do not believe I have ever seen, whether at TCU or anywhere else. It stands about fifty feet tall or so, with a luscious top of bright green leaves giving much needed shade to the ground below. It does not have a particularly wide trunk, especially for how tall it appears. The trunk is probably about two and a half feet thick, whereas another tree near it has closer to a three to four foot thick trunk. The lower two-thirds of the trunk has the rutted, fissured texture of bark, but something interesting starts happening about three feet below the first large branch. The brown bark we are accustomed to on trees shoots up the trunk and eventually gives way to a smooth, white surface. Just a few feet below the lowest limb, the brown bark gets patchy and thinned out as the smooth white bark begins to surface. The bark mixture looks like brush strokes from an impressionist painting. The brown, rough bark travels onto the lower branches but gets more and more sparse until all the top branches are completely white. I love the white bark. It makes the branches look like ivory elephant tusks. Looking at it from below, the lighter branches seem softer and yet more densely strong. They are like marble pillars anchoring the tree down, only they work from the sky downwards. Rather than the bark itself morphing from brown and scratchy to smooth white, maybe the white bark makes up the body of the tree below as well, calmly extending underneath the brown bark and into the roots. In this respect, the top of the tree is like a snake shedding its skin, being born again a tabula rasa, wiser and more complete. 

The white bark poses a stark contrast to the green leaves decorating every branch. On many other trees, the branches and leaves all get darker as one looks up into the canopy and all the shapes merge into one, with little differentiation possible between branch, leaf, bird, and squirrel. On this tree, the leaves are all so noticeable against the white branches, and they seem to get even lighter as the eye scans upward. The space in the tree feels open and light as the sun glints off the leaves and shimmers around the spider’s web of branches. I hear sporadic scratching as a squirrel scurries along a limb and look up to find it jump from one to the other. The light was so clear that I could tell it had a nut in its mouth. I watched the squirrel go about his business and decided it was time to go home and go about mine, feeling a new skin of tranquility and perspective granted to me by observation of this tree.