Be-wilder-ment | Barb Morris

Espaliered apple tree — An espaliered apple tree at the Chicago Botanic Garden

You’ve probably seen them. They’re often apple or pear trees, planted right up against a wall, limbs twined onto wires so they’re flat against the wall. The trees still bear fruit, but they take up much less space.

These trees are espaliered.

I used to admire them. Such pretty trees splayed out against brick walls. Now I feel sorry for them.

What would that feel like – to want to grow, to bud and fruit, but instead to be trained and pruned, wired and flattened, so you didn’t take up so much space and you look beautiful? How handy for the gardener – for his tree to be small and orderly, but still produce fruit.

The tree herself is still wild, yearning to grow, to stretch her strong branches up to the sky in search of sun. To be nourished from her deep, wild roots. To feel her leaves unfurl and buds form, and to feel the power of forming fruit.

And along comes a gardener (all the gardeners shown espaliering apple trees in my web search appear to be male) who thinks, I’m gonna make me a tree that still gives me fruit but that is well-behaved, by golly.

So the tree is pruned and wired and trained for maximum fruit production and minimum encroachment into the gardener’s territory.

An espaliered tree is an apt metaphor for the contrast between our social, culturally-constructed selves and our true wild nature.

The wild tree is our true nature – our essential, instinctual Self gifted to us at birth. Those wires and pruning and snipping off of anything that doesn’t fit the preference of the gardener, well, that’s the false, social self at work.

We all have false, social selves. Personas. They’re the costumes we wear to fit in, get along, stay safe, and make others happy. They’re part of being human. Our social selves are necessary. They keep us out of the street and out of jail. The trouble comes when we aren’t able to choose when to wear them anymore – when we forget that we’re wearing a disguise. Then these selves become rigid, too-small skins. Trapped inside them, we slowly suffocate.

We all wear masks in order to go along and get along and navigate the culture we’re in. And thankfully we all have, somewhere deep down inside, who we truly are: that elemental, essential, instinctual wild Self who carries our knowing, our purpose, and our passions.

For many of us, there comes a time when we realize we’ve lost touch with who we really are, at root. We realize we’ve let ourselves be espaliered – pruned, flattened, trained in straight lines. Beautiful to the eye of the gardener, for whom we’ve produced abundant fruit. We exist for him, and not for ourselves.

At this point, unlike the tree, we human women have a choice. Choosing to remain espaliered has its rewards: shelter, warmth, less risk of damage to those precious limbs. Many women will choose to remain safe within the castle walls.

Others of us will come to understand that to remain espaliered is equivalent to choosing death. We will pull ourselves free from the wires and away from the wall. We will return to our wild root stock. We will become feral, unsafe, free-ranging and open to the elements. We probably won’t produce as many apples, but other rewards will take their place. Wild birds will make their nests in our newly-craggy branches. Fierce badgers will den in our roots.

We will be who we are, again. We will be becoming who we’re meant to be, again.

Here’s one way to feel the difference between your social self and your essential self. (This is a riff on the Body Compass, a foundational tool for Wayfinder Life Coaches and their clients.)

Imagine yourself as an espaliered tree. Become the tree. Feel the wall at your back. Feel your limbs tied to the wires running in straight lines. Feel the urge to send out unruly shoots. Feel them snipped off by the gardener. Feel him admiring your rule-following prettiness and fertility. What do you notice in your body? Choose three words to describe this feeling of being espaliered.

Now take three deep breaths and shake your body. Move the energy of espalier through your body and let that shit go.

Finally, imagine yourself as a wild tree. Become the tree. Feel your wild roots deep in the soil. Feel your sturdy trunk. Feel your strong limbs spread and stretch for the sun. Feel new shoots sprout all along your limbs. Feel your leaves unfurl and your buds form. Feel the buds solidify and become fruit. Feel the fruit become heavier and heavier. Feel the birds build nests in your limbs, and the badger make a home in the space between your deep, sheltering roots. There is space for all. What do you notice in your body now? Choose three words to describe this feeling.

Which tree feels stronger? Which tree feels more powerful? Which tree would you rather be?

When you’re living and making choices from your social, culturally-constrained self, your body will tell you. You will feel more like the espaliered tree. And when you live and make choices rooted in your wild, essential Self, your body will feel more like the wild tree.

Did you try this exercise? I’d love to hear about it. Contact me here or leave a comment below. Thank you!

PS. I’m transitioning to sending email newsletters rather than blog posts. If you’d like to receive fresh content as well as information about my latest offerings, please subscribe. You can subscribe on the form in the sidebar here. In my newsletter, I go a little deeper into one of the four touchstones I use in my work with clients, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further.

(Photo credit: Chicago Botanic Garden)

Dismantling dams and rewilding rivers is hard work. Hard work, and necessary work, if life is to thrive.

You and I were born free flowing streams. As we grow, most of us become dammed and channelized, our water “reclaimed,” our wildness dishonored and diverted. We couldn’t resist this domestication when we were kids, subject to forces way bigger and stronger than we were. The grownups who dammed our waters were mostly just trying to keep us safe. Our culture, however, does not have our best interests in mind. It simply wants our water for its own purposes. The utilitarian value of the river’s water is more important to culture than the intrinsic value of a wild river’s nature.

My brother and sister-in-law live on the banks of what’s left of the Colorado River, close to where that mighty Grand Canyon-carving river flows to a trickle through Mexico into the Gulf of California. Here the Colorado is channelized and denuded, beautiful in its own way but a shadow of its former wild self. The Colorado’s waters are dammed all along its length — diverted to irrigate crops, generate power, and provide drinking water for Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas and other western cities.

Real rivers are messy and unpredictable, for sure. But the life supported by a river that runs free is exponentially richer. That life isn’t as useful to humans. It’s wild. Wild life has value in and of itself, value not seen or appreciated when the dam was built.

Fish-killing dams have been removed from many Pacific Northwest rivers in the last decade. Two examples: the Elwha in Washington and the Rogue in Oregon. Four dams on the Klamath River could be removed starting in 2022. Taking out Snake River and Columbia River dams has been a controversial topic for decades.

Demolish a dam and lose control. Floods are unleashed, rapids ripple again, wild life thrives, natural ebb and flow happens. Salmon recover, and they feed Orcas who depend on the salmon. Riparian songbirds reappear as willows recolonize river banks. As marshes, wetlands, and estuaries rewater, the abundant life native to these swampy habitats returns. A wild river isn’t conducive to commerce and capitalism, though, so be prepared to live less conveniently and with less stuff.

Yes, taking out dams is hard work. Yet dismantle those dams we must, once we become aware of the damage they do.

What’s the dam in your free-flowing wild river? Is your dam made from following rules you don’t believe in, rather than choosing your commitments intentionally? Is your dam the belief that you have to be small and quiet, rather than living big and bold? Is your dam made from waiting for permission to flow, rather than letting loose and being who you are? For me, it’s all of these. (I’m flouting all three of these limiting beliefs by blogging much more often!)

As adults, we can dismantle the dams blocking our flow. We can take them apart, brick by brick. Or we can blow them up all at once. We can also keep them, if we like the result. But be prepared to pay the price of dam demolition. Wildness does not exist to be utilized and controlled, to be at the beck and call of those who would use its resources for their own gain. Be prepared to ride the wild river’s ups and downs, to swirl in the eddies. Be prepared to meander up side channels to swampy places where life thrives in unexpected ways.

Be prepared to discover just how resilient you truly are.

Photo by John Gibbons on Unsplash

Barb Morris

Writer, Teacher, Facilitator, Artist

Tag Archives: Be-wilder-ment

Rewild yourself.