Trees (Linden!): Medicine for the Times

The Summer Solstice has graced us with long daylight hours, and the light just begins to wane…

These long days, warm nights, and sweet scents wafting on an evening breeze bring me back to childhood.  I am currently spending some time with my parents in Sandy, Utah, in the home where I grew up at the feet of the Wasatch Mountains. It is a wild thing to witness this place change over the course of my lifetime. The population has more than doubled since I was born here. Subdivisions, stripmalls, and new developments are cropping up in every square inch, there is more and more dense traffic climbing up into the mountains, sometimes several hours journey compared to what used to be a 20 minute drive. I have been reflecting on how both myself and this place have changed, and how we find each other at this place in time.

I’ve been meandering the yard, tracing circles, following paths that I walked at 2, 10, 16, now 35 years old. So many memories - of gatherings and celebrations, pet burials, deep footprints in snow, fruits harvested, ducklings rescued from window wells, warm summer nights. It is a true privilege to stay with this place and grow with it in tandem, to still be connected to this home after all this time.

Since studying herbalism, I have also recognized so much medicine growing here. Yarrow stands, mint patches, abundant dandelion - the too often villainized “weed,” roses and roses galore. I realized that an intoxicating sweet scent was coming from two trees, blooming each year around the summer solstice. They are linden trees, and somehow I had barely registered their existence for most of my life. Over recent years I have come to know linden, and received the gift of harvesting her leaves and flowers - mindfully stashing enough to last me throughout the year.

I’ve now come to the bottom of my supply. And her buds are just plumping out, getting ready to bloom…

I find myself meditating on the medicine of linden - both strong and gentle with an affinity for the heart. Here, with these linden trees that were planted about the same time I was born, I find myself with a heavy heart.

Linden leaf and flower

There is a recent article in the New York Times titled “As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces an ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb.’” Doesn’t sound great, right? It really isn’t.

The article details the multifaceted threats posed by climate change to ¾ of Utah’s population along the Wasatch Front - the Metropolitan sprawl in and around Salt Lake City at the base of the Wasatch Mountain range. The Great Salt Lake has already shrunk by ⅔, due to drought and unprecedentedly hot weather. If it continues to recede, not only will wildlife populations die off, including brine shrimp and lake flies (the food source of 10 million migratory birds who will then become threatened) but also, high levels of arsenic will be exposed in the lake bed (a consequence of nearby mining industry dumping waste into the lake), and wind will circulate toxic dust. According to the New York Times, “the air around Salt Lake City will occasionally turn poisonous.” Poisonous. Occasionally?

This is only one instance of many where we are witnessing extreme climate conditions, and what feels like impending chaos. There are mass extinctions happening all over the planet; weather patterns are becoming erratic and often dangerous; clean air and clean water, what should be a birthright for all creatures, is no longer a given. Somehow, many humans remain oblivious or delusional about the dire state of affairs.

The Great Salt Lake continues to recede…

I don’t mean to harp too much on doomsday scenarios. It can be disheartening to the point of not useful to dwell in despair of the great losses we are witness to. If you opened this newsletter and began reading with hopes of finding some inspiring or soothing plant news, don’t lose faith! That too is part of this rant (scroll down!) - the plants and the many, mysterious ways they foster healing in us.

In my experience, there is no way out but through, particularly when it comes to grief. Perhaps even in this moment, you might turn toward whatever grief resides in you- even just one breath. Not to open the flood gates completely and be fully overcome by the deep wells of grief in the world and perhaps in your own bones…but rather, a being with, a turning toward, a subtle titration of accumulated sorrows. I know it to be true in my own life: the willingness to turn toward grief, and the movement, experience, and expression of it in an embodied way feeds our aliveness. As Martin Prechtel teaches: grief and praise are two sides of the same coin.

So, in this time of great grief - of guns in schools, deranged teenagers, direspect of womens’ bodies, fear of womens’ power, the loss of ecosystems, animal and plant species, the list goes on…let us call upon the medicine of tress. In the words of John O’donohue:

“...The tree rises from the dark. It circles around the "heart of darkness" from which it reaches towards the light. A tree is a perfect presence. It is somehow able to engage and integrate its own dissolution. The tree is wise in knowing how to foster its own loss. It does not become haunted by the loss nor addicted to it. The tree shelters and minds the loss. Out of this comes the quiet dignity and poise of a tree's presence…A  life that wishes to honour its own possibility has to learn too how to integrate the suffering of dark and bleak time into a dignity of presence.”

The majesty of Linden in bloom

And let us come back to the linden trees.

In Europe, Linden has a long history as a sacred tree. The leaves, flowers, and bark have been utilized as medicine for millennia. Linden’s traditional use and lore in Old Europe is deep. It has been called upon in rituals of divination, marriage, fertility, and healing. It carries associations of enduring love, hospitality, and kindness, and brings harmony and protection wherever it grows. In many places, it is planted to engender steadfastness in the home. Linden was often planted in the village center where people would gather under the tree to council. It is believed to bring forward truth and is a powerful ally of reconciliation.

In terms of therapeutic approaches, linden acts on the nervous system and has a strong affinity for the heart. In the context of this month’s newsletter, the Linden tree is specific to states of grief and anxiety. It is also specific to hot, dry, and tense tissue states. It could shine as part of a formula to address inflammatory skin eruptions, due to liver congestion / toxicity resulting in heat releasing through the skin. Linden’s medicine is cooling (especially as a cold infusion!), soothing, moistening, and also diuretic - drawing excess fluids out of tissues. It is specific for high blood pressure, and promotes the softening, moistening, and cooling of arterial tissue. Linden is gentle and versatile, a wonderful ally for children, elders, and everyone in between.

If this summer finds you or your loved ones feeling hot, inflamed, aggravated, tense, dry, agitated, anxious, sorrowful…you may consider turning to linden for help and healing.

Wherever you are, take care. Take even just a moment each day - find your back against a tree (a Linden tree perhaps?!), feel the dignity in your own spine, and breath together in reciprocity: the trees receive our exhale, and we breath theirs in.