Being With: Essays in Poetics, Ecology, and the Senses

Abstract

I have been watching over a particular tree now for about five years. The fire-flowered West Australian Christmas Tree ('Nuytsia floribunda') lives in a small bushland reserve in a Perth suburb, in close connection to a community of banksias and balgas typical of the Swan River coastal plain. In fact, the tree is a hemi-parasite and has to gain some of its nutrients from the roots of host plants to survive. After the long-drawn-out spring rains, the blossoms were notably vivid this year but, unlike other spring seasons, without the sweet, acrid, and stimulating fragrance I have come to associate with its kind. Each of my visits to this tree, no matter what time of year and no matter how long or short, reveals something new to me: a procession of insects harvesting its nectar, a glint of the sun on its irregular canopy, the smell of its leaves after a heavy downpour, and the tactile memory of touching its rough bark. I am increasingly getting to know the Christmas Tree through the uncomplicated yet profound choice of being with this individual.