BY JODY BENSON
Los Alamos

Wednesday’s full moon brilliant enough to wake a hibernating bear and energize the rest of us to do all kinds of moon-crazy things— Wednesday’s brilliant full moon began Tu B’Shevat: the Birthday of all the Trees.  Why do we need a tree birthday? According to the Law, Leviticus 19:23-25, we need to honor the tree and let it grow strong like a child into an adult before we demand it serves us.  Then, the Law says, after four years the first fruits of the newly officially adult tree belong to the Proud Parents humans call God. After that, as with graduation, the generous tree gives its seeds to the rest of us animals to harvest and to eat.  In other words, to legally eat a cherry, humans need to know how old a tree is.

(Oh, and also we celebrate the birthday simply to honor and thank every tree for the-everything-they-do to sustain Life, feeding Life, protecting Life, being its lungs, holding up the sky….)  

So Happy Birthday to all you trees planted when the wind or a raven or chipmunk or human dropped you as a seed into the soil.  We join the entire community of Earth in marveling at you: the soil that you transform from mineral to life, the sun warming and drawing you out of the Earth, the other trees sharing their wisdom through the mycorrhiza to teach you what to grow into, the morning dew and occasional rain that rises from your roots through the xylem to the leaves into the clouds and back to the earth…by insects and birds and mammals that mark your progress and await your first bloom while rocks, deer, gophers, and heavy-footed, heavy-wheeled, plastic-wielding humans challenge your very existence—today is your birthday.  Today you little baby trees join every other tree in the entire world to celebrate your and their birthday.  

In the knowledge of the pre-technological humans when we still understood that Homo (so-called) sapiens depend on the rest of nature to sustain us, humans honored trees.  We allowed the tree to grow and mature as we should allow children to grow and mature.  According to the Law, young trees, like children, must be nurtured and protected into maturity.  Then, as with graduation for humans, the parents of the child and the cultivator of the tree give credit where credit is due—to the Originator and to the All The Rest of the living planet that got us here.  Without the rest of every chemical element on the Earth that the plants transform into life, there would be no us to pollute the soil, chop the trees, poison the pollinators, plasticize the oceans, asphalt the wildlands, use up all the water, steal every element for our own devices, nurture the soil, create music, teach our children well, care for one another, grow flowers, plant trees, and celebrate their life-supporting beauty and generosity with a birthday party.  

Right now, as the warming sun and the special, crazy-making moon that urges the sap to rise, coyotes to howl, and rabbits, birds, deer, blue-furred snowbugs, and us to go out in the moonlight and dance, let’s celebrate spring.  Hug a tree, or better, plant one.  Who knows whether we will be alive to eat its fruit, but somebody might, as long as we protect the Earth from which it grows.