I’ve had the recent pleasure of reading Thomas Merton’s work The Seven Story Mountain. I found the book deeply rewarding and extremely inspiring. Merton offers deep insight into the processes of art and contemplation, two themes I find critical to the arborist experience.

Early in the book Merton illustrates how the seeds of art were sowed in his life by his father who traveled the world widely as a painter, many times taking the young Merton with him.

“I had learned from my own father that it was almost blasphemy to regard the function of art as merely to reproduce some kind of sensible pleasure or, at best, to stir up the emotions to a transitory thrill. I had always understood that art was contemplation, and that it involved the action of the highest faculties of man,” (Merton, 222).

On this note I return again to think about the duality of art and science in arboriculture, namely the former. That art demands our highest faculties is an admirable challenge, both physically and intellectually. Because arboriculture is, in a sense, both song and dance. It is true, we must make a living, but that living comes most joyous just beyond the very edges of our potential. The spark to become stronger, smarter and more efficient for both ourselves and our clients never quite burns out. I think that is the spirit of art that Merton alludes to, not some transitory thrill, but a deep, unending search to move beyond what we thought capable of ourself, drawing on every skill we have to bring it forward, onto the canvas, into the world.

But how lasting is the work of the arborist? What becomes of a cut and a snip in three or four  or five hundred years?

Consider this process of maintenance. Particulary tree maintenance in all its vast canon of examples. For it is in the kingdom of maintenance that rests the concept of art in arboriculture. I am especially enticed to think here of subjects like design and installation; fine pruning like espalier bonsai, and cultural practices like grafting; cabling, bracing and propping; I imagine too the plant explorers of the early twentieth century responsible for the first arboretums in America, and the developers of modern technology for mapping the benefits of the urban forests in the later half of that same century. This campaign of maintaining trees on an extremely close and advanced level has brought us into the twenty first century. It is no wonder that we have both trees and art in our cultures that have outlived the centuries. It is inherently important to preserve these things, which in many instances have indeed required our highest faculties to create and maintain over hundreds of years.

Arboriculture is a long lasting tradition, possibly more ancient than we give credit for. It’s inherited from the ages, and has an incredibly wide array of avenues within its limits to pursue in artistic ways.

Merton writes: “This means, in practice, that there is only one vocation. Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example,” (Merton, 458).

That’s a wonderful sentiment. More than ever I think our examples as professional arborists make a huge impact in the direction the trade will take in the future. How we inspire our clients and colleagues to think about trees and tree care, and how they may inspire us to think of them. But this is merely the old story of the arborist as well, a tradition preserved by the silence of the trees we care for.