The Importance of Taking Care

Journeys with the Tree Spirit

I go to the tree spirit’s clearing, frustrated by my trip and the challenge of meeting collectors in any meaningful way. I have my notebook and pen. I sit on a wooden stoop.

“It’s not hard to imagine,” the tree spirit said. “You saw enough. Maybe the people would look different, but it’s the same everywhere. It’s a building at the end of a dirt road. There are sacks of dried herbs. The head of the collecting unit reaches his hand in to check that the herbs are dried, looks to see if other plants are mixed in. Some will do this carefully. A lot more will not.”

He gets up and starts walking. I follow along. He seems impatient, more gruff than usual. I wonder if I’ve done something wrong. Even the little girl is subdued.

“It’s not interesting or exciting,” he said. “Herbalists claim it is - wild collectors doing some traditional practice. No one ever traditionally chose to harvest sacks of herbs to sell for money. There was a market and so they did it. A few people made money, so more people did it.”

“It’s a short story and you are trying to make it long,” he added.

We keep walking back to this clearing. I can feel the little girl’s hand in mine. She squeezes it.

“He’s mad because he’s a tree,” she told me. “Wild collectors are taking too many plants and not caring for them. They’re leaving them on the side of the road where they get dirty and dried out. They’re careless. That’s what you need to talk about,” she told me, “the importance of taking care.”