Reading: FINDING THE MOTHER TREE, Suzanne Simard

Some few years ago, I was fortunate enough to sign up for and take a workshop and tour with the Saddler's Woods Conservation Association. The tour took us on the hiking paths through the 25 acre Saddler's Woods and the tour guides were so immensely knowledgeable about the plants and trees that I was deeply impressed. One of the guides picked up a bag and gathered trash throughout our hike. I can't begin to tell you all they told me about the watershed, the berries, the invaders and the indigenous plants. You need to take their workshop and tour next time it is offered! I found it through the Audubon Adult Education program, but I noticed it wasn't on their Winter/Spring online brochure, so perhaps the best thing to do would be to contact the Saddler's Woods Conservation Group directly. I can give you their mailing address right now because I am going to send a donation today, but you can look them up online to get a phone number. Saddler's Woods Conservation Association, P. O. Box 189, Oaklyn, NJ 08107

This fits in with a couple of conversations that sprang up recently in my days about what to do to help, how to focus on a worthy cause when so man clamor for our attention. My answer was that generally the causes drop in my lap. Twice a year, I make a series of small donations when I get a windfall - my Income Tax Refund, and my Property Tax Reimbursement. On the Income Tax Return, let me say what I told the tax preparer when she said I didn't need to have so much taken out: "It is a good way for me to save. Also, it is MY Government, and I don't mind allowing them to use my tax money to keep our country the rich and comfortable place that it is, for me, anyhow. At the end of the year, I get my money back just like when I was a young working woman in the city and I had a Christmas Club at the bank!."

So, when I get my windfall, I usually send small sums (consoling myself by thinking that if everyone sent such sums, these charities would be well provided for!) to various animal charities such as Alley Cat Allies, PETA, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and sometimes environmental groups such as the Arbor Foundation and Greenpeace. This year I am adding two new ones, Funny Farm, and Saddler's Woods Conservation Association. The rest of my charitable effort goes into taking loving care of the animals I have rescued from the neighborhood or from shelters. I rescued a cat from a cemetery, three kittens from the Vet., a survivor of a house fire, and a dog from the Animal Orphanage in Voorhees. They are expensive and take a lot of work, so I consider that a volunteer job - and all of that came to me, I didn't have to go seek it out! The book I mentioned above is the selection from the Book Club in the Meeting I attend - Woodbury Meeting. As it happens, I had bought the book months ago after reading about it in the New York Times Sunday paper Book Review section. I LOVE trees! Here is a little poem I wrote about trees after a snowy lunch time walk when I was still working.

Trees are neither silent nor still

They move into the minds

of those who walk among them

Leave love letters on sidewalks in chemistry

and red love letters in snow.

I know I mentioned before that I was raised in the city, in the brick canyons of South Philadelphia down near the stadiums, the airport, and the highway. We had one tree on our block, trapped in a sidewalk size square of dirt. When I had the great fortune to get to New Jersey, I was permanently enchanted by the woods, the trees, the beach, the ocean, all the magical wonders of the natural world that city children never get to know.

In my town there is an ancient and enormous tree with a huge spiral turning trunk that I think is a willow oak, but I am not sure. I have looked it up. It has been the subject of a few ofm my paintings and I like to visit with it every day when I walk the dog. I love the way the vivid green lichen grows in the folds of its huge paw-like exposed roots, and the way the snow lays in those same folds in winter, and the leaves are captured there in autumn.

The book I am reading is very interesting to me so far (though I am only in early chapters) for two reasons: One - it is a memoir, and Two - it is a transformation story. It has been a life long matter of inquiry to me about what events or experiences cause the profound transformations that some people experience in their lives. For example, one day a slave ship captain had a lightening strike to his conscience and he became a monk and wrote AMAZING GRACE! In this book, the author was an employee of a logging company and the descendant of a logging family, but she has her eyes and heart opened while examining a plantation of new sickly seedlings in a clear-cut forest area. I will let you know more about this book as I read more, but I wanted to say that sometimes I am filled with despair when I see another tree cut in my neighborhood, or another small patch of woods destroyed to build more houses, not to mention fertile farms turned into housing developments here in our Garden State, but I help ameliorate my despair by doing whatever small things I can for whatever has dropped in my lap, and in this case, it is a donation to Saddler's Woods to help the dedicated people protecting this little irreplaceble treasure in our midst. Also, I protect the 25 trees on my own property and have planted several over the years.

Happy trails! And by the way, you can find Saddler's Woods and hike there, it is an easy and short hike. It is located on MacArthur Road, just off Cuthbert Blvd. in Haddon Twp. It is between a shopping center and a diner and there is a light at the turn to MacArthur Rd. Just a short way down the road there is a historic marker and there are two trails you can walk. Jo Ann