The Beginning of Devotion

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Mary Oliver

In the beginning, there was no word for them, no name. I strode right past their sky-needled tallness day after day, listened to my feet as they kissed the pebbled path. My goal was movement, shedding all the bindings of before, or what was to come. Loosening the caregiver constrictions as I walked, looking down so I wouldn’t stumble. Focused on the ground, the only firm thing I knew that was not a wall.

In the beginning, there was water. Cool running water, burbling over stones, rushing under bridges, pooling in the pond, leading sticks and ducks and wanderers through the city from Hogsback Falls to the Kichi Zibi. Neighborhoods clustered, children dipped nets, dogs dunked themselves and shook rainbows into the air. In winter, skaters scratched across the ice, frogs mud-slumbered, bullrushes sentinelled the edge. I walked.

In the beginning, there were birds. The 5 o’clock crows a thread of black stitching the evening sky along the river to their roost. Armadas of geese facing east, and the wood ducks, harlequins hidden among mallards. There was the pair of northern flickers berrying around on the ground, and the early morning thrush that called my eyes high, scanning for the fluted song trail flitting through the green. Looking up, I saw all the trees I could not name. Their loft lining the river path, filling in the gaps of sky, tangled and tall, a mass of maybe.

In the beginning, there were three. A trio of trees. Trees, I said. Their arms opening at the entrance to the river path at the bottom of our street. Three trees. Needled, sweeping branches filigreeing the sunlight.

In the beginning, there were fascicle tufts of green. I counted needles, consulted guidebooks, wandered through the park pulling branches toward me, counting. Scotch, jack, and red pine with two needles per cluster. Pitch with three. Cedar with her keeled needles. I stood under the tower of trio and peered up, pulled a branch toward me and stroked the soft tendrils tasseling along the spur shoot. I could have bought the right guidebook, could have compared the page to growing being. But I waited for time to turn and tell me. Waited for the needles to yellow and tumble to the ground, or not. Tamaracks being the only deciduous conifer there is. I waited. And watched. I walked each day looking up.

In the beginning, there were tamaracks. Shedding needles, revealing themselves. All through winter I walked and stopped. Waded through snow to look up through slender branches holding the bowl of the sky. Dusk, dawn, noon sun brilliant off the snow. Trunks thick and nicked. Wounds sealing, not healing. Bark rising like thick crackly feathers ruffled. Branches with a bauble or a tight tie of rope left from some old tryst. Through winter, I observed with my eyes. Scanned the trees’ skyward reach and cracked crevices, their little nooks and long branches. Looked up and down, at shadows and streaks. Midafternoon, when no one was watching, I leaned into the trunk and felt the sharp shin of bark scratch my cheek. My hands wandered over the round belly of a boll with its umbilical indent folding in. I closed my eyes and listened. The faint crackle of sap warmed by sun and beginning to run pulsed and popped in my ear.  

In the beginning, it was spring. That magical unfolding—viriditas. Pushed out through chrysanthemum shaped buds, blossoming sepia cervixes birthed tufts of tender needles, soft to the touch. Each centimeter celebrated, as barren turned to green and rose-bud cones baubled the branches. When heat bleached the buttoned male cones and shriveled them to dust, I wept. Not yet knowing that they had shed their pollen and their purpose and were done.

In the beginning, I paced. From tree to tree to tree, triangulating my sorrows in their shadow’s edge. Counted twelve, twelve, twenty. East to north, north to west, west to east. Their angles framed a space of green with shadows trailing, shading, leading, bleeding from tree to tree. The intimacy an arm’s length of wonder. Images and details that drew me closer. Closer still, the tamaracks whispered. At roots’ edge, I shed my shoes and stepped softly, treading on holy ground. A full cycle of seasons to quiet my mind. To arrive here, at the hidden glimmer of Tamarack beckoning.

In the beginning, there is silence. Nothing but air between us.

Nancy Huggett writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada) with the Pasapkedjinawong River at the bottom of her street. Thanks to support and prodding from Merrit Writers, Firefly, and Kairos Writers, her work won the 2022 American Literary Review’s CNF award; was shortlisted for TNQ’s Edna Staebler Personal Essay contest and Cutthroat’s Barry Lopez CNF prize; received Best-of-the-Net and Pushcart nominations; won the 2024 RBC-PEN Canada New Voices Award; and has chalked up a gazillion (ongoing and forthcoming) rejections. You can find her work in Citron Review, Event, The Forge, Literary Mama, Passages North, and Prairie Fire. She is working on a lyric essay collection about ambiguous loss and caregiving.

Published January 15 2025