The Official Treehouse Articles Thread

An ode to trees by Hermann Hesse...


For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

 
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Hey that was pretty cool. It got a little far out here and there but overall, quite an ode to trees and those who dig them
 
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Them bitches is nasty! And old, as in 195m y o, dayum
 
Dunno how much general interest there is, but I like reading about far off places that have retained their traditions over centuries. Kind of a nice break from the 'Throw it out, get version# +1 of modern society'

Cod industry in NE NW Norway. More a local insight than the minutiae of economics...

For as long as people can remember, cod have come to Lofoten. One day, each February, they appear, swarming beneath the turquoise waters, so plentiful that the fishermen say you can hear them skimming over one another.

"And then, one day, they disappear," says Kalle Mentzen, who owns and curates a private museum in an old cod oil factory now filled with nautical heirlooms. "Just like that," he snaps his fingers, "and they're gone." He compares it with the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897. But the rush of the skrei—or "wanderers," as cod are known in the local parlance—happens every year.


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Corrected where in Norway it is. Know what's stupid? I sometimes define cardinal directions spatially from where I'm located. IOW, western Norway is physically closer to me, and since I define myself as being an "easterner" in reference to the USA, that makes western Norway east. What kind of brain defect causes that?! :^D
 
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Our country is slacking big time. We are supposed to be the example of a free country. But it makes sense for the same old errors to arise in a once new country.
 
Martin guitars are pretty much the pinnacle of acoustic guitars, a buddy's dad had one and the quality is out of this world. He also had a national steel dobro, a replica but still (the nationals from the 30s and 40s are worth a fortune), even to this day i can remember how incredible it was.
 
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Ok, this is not posted to be yet another source of sky is falling news. It's interesting to see various life forms quantified. Reminds me of when big Jim said 'sometimes quantity is its own quality'

 
A lengthy romantic exploration of the past, from Denmark to USA. Maybe be best broken up into sessions...

He flung open the door to the room where I was waiting and held out a book, its marbled cover torn and thick with dust. Somehow I knew in that moment that it held the key to the house’s story. By bringing the house back to life, I had earned it.

I opened the cover and saw in elegant handwriting the name Hans Jorgen Hansen and the year 1900. It was a diary belonging to the man who built our house. As I turned the pages, I noticed that someone else had written on them, too, a woman named Anna. How unusual, I thought, for two people to share a diary—even more so because, according to historical records, Hans’s wife was named Christine.

 
Interesting.
I only read a few chapters, will do the rest later.

Odense is the third largest city in Denmark today.
No longer the dusty small town of the diary.
 
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Fun article. I always sniff trees I cut, but I don't put much thought in it. There's something I cut in the woods around here that smells lemony. I still haven't paid close enough attention to figure out exactly what it is, but one of these days I'll take the time to parse it out.
 
Martin guitars are pretty much the pinnacle of acoustic guitars, a buddy's dad had one and the quality is out of this world. He also had a national steel dobro, a replica but still (the nationals from the 30s and 40s are worth a fortune), even to this day i can remember how incredible it was.
They used to give free tours of the factory where the guitars are still handmade (everything but the fretboard). It's a pretty cool tour and they are really nice to the guests. I made a comment about all the women that worked there and he hinted that they make better production factory workers. because they can focus on the details better than men.
 
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