Hemlocks

Now that the trees have shed their leaves and it appears that a person is looking at the world's bare skeleton, the view is so remarkably different.  The Hemlocks are standing out.  It's all very reminiscent of the forest primeval of Longellow's Evangeline:

"This is the forest primeval.  The murmuring

pines and the hemlocks,

bearded with moss, and in garments green, indis-

tinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and

prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on

their bosoms." (1-8)

On days when the fog lies heavy on the fallen leaves and moves in and around the trunks of the oaks which stand like sentinels, I am reminded most of Longfellow.  The way the branches of the young hemlocks sweep the ground and the majesty of the ancient ones towering over the earth gives me romantic impulses (historic romantic, not emotional romantic).  Of course, there is also the poisoned cup of hemlock taken by Socrates.  However, the 1st Nations people supposedly used the leafy twigs of hemlock for tea used to treat colds, fevers, stomach and instestinal issues and scurvy.  They also used it for steam baths.  I know I had an anthropology professor who had some pictures of the boughs lining a teepee, which I thought were hemlock but may have been spruce.  So you may well ask, what is the point to these ramblings? 

To which I reply, merely this: when the leafy distractions of nature have blown off and the world once more seems stark and we can view the bare bones of life, we can appreciate the underlay that is normally overlooked and all that it connotes.