Made in the shade

Noticing is addictive. Once you see one tree silhouetted against a building, you start seeing shade trees–the upright ghosts of living trees outlined as shadows on nearby vertical surfaces–everywhere you go.

I’ve talked before about color-collecting, the practice of choosing a particular color (say, red), and then taking a walk in which you try to notice every instance of said color (a stop sign, a passing jogger’s hat, a parked car, a cast-off Coke can). The first time I talked here about color-collecting, I reasoned “If we’re going to travel the territory of our mundane lives, we might as well notice the neighbors.” Now nearly four years later, I find myself nodding emphatically to my own argument. What better way to make yourself at home in your environs than by getting to know your neighbors, both the actual trees you meet and the ghostly shades they cast?

I took today’s photos last weekend, and over the intervening days, I’ve been seeing tree shadows everywhere: on buildings, on cars, on fences, on other trees. The natural place for any shadow to lie is on the ground, shade gravitating like water to low places. But in a forest of trees or a suburb of houses, there are many available objects to catch any given shadow. Presumably any of these shades would prefer to lie lazily on snow-blanketed ground, but instead, they’ve been snagged on verticality. Can you imagine the courage of an east-facing facade that stands unmoving even while knowing the weight of a shade tree will fall upon it every sunny morning?

In the summer time, these shade trees are shapeless and amorphous: dark blobs that bespeak the leaves of others. In a snowy season, shade trees are stripped skeletal, the shadows they cast tracing their inner anatomy. In summer, we see superficially, lulled by the loveliness of leaves; in winter, all that gets cast away like so many veils, and we see (truly) what lies beneath.

Some say shadows are unreal, the lingering after-affect of light and enlightenment. But why should we privilege the cause over the effect? Once a tree has grown, we have no use for its now-split seed; once we’ve reached our own adulthood, we’re discouraged from behaving as babies. Leaves are arboreal flesh, branches arboreal bones, and tree shades arboreal spirit. If over-arching trees add value to shady suburban homes, why wouldn’t the winter shadows these same tree cast be likewise prized?

Click here for the complete photo-set of shade trees. And while you’re collecting all things arboreal, click over to the March 2008 Festival of Trees, currently hosted on Orchards Forever. Enjoy!