BUCHSTABEN

A is for arboreality, alchemy, ancestors
B is for Buche, German for beech, which gave us bok, buk, and book – and Buchstaben, letters.
C is for cathedral thinking
D is for dendrology and dendrites: your nerve endings that connect you to trees
E is for emergency and emergence
F is for forest from Lat. foris for outside, door or gate
G is for gratitude as a political practice
H is for hemaphroditic trees such as linden and  horse chestnut
I is for the intimacy of inosculated beech limbs
J is for jerk, the hypnic kind that awakes us on the cusp of sleep to remind us of our hominid nights dreaming in trees
K is for kin and for kindness
L is for listening, deep and cellular
M is for mycelial thinking and mycorrhizal fungi whose couplings with algae gave rise to vegetal life
N is for negative capability, the ability to dwell in uncertainty
O is for oak, which grows for 300 years, holds for 300 years, dies for 300 years
P for the porosity of the skin, the body as threshold
Q is for questions, which build a bridge of connection
R is for radical from the Latin radix for root
S is for the song not the singer
T is for the trouble with which we must stay
U is for underground, unlearning
V is for vidr, Icelandic for wood and vitja: wisdom
W is for wit and witch
X is for xylem, the plant tissue that conducts water and mineral salts from the roots to all other parts and forms the wood of trees
Y is for Yggdrasil, the world tree
Z is for the living meaning of Zen: “The cypress tree in the courtyard”