Tacamahac
By EagleSong,CCH
Tack-a-ma-hack. Tac-a-ma-hac
Tacamahac
I love the word’s sound in
my ears; it’s stacatto feel on my tongue.
Tacamahac. Tacamahac.
Tacamahac
Murmuring, I slip away; to other places, other
times.
Tacamahac
Hack-ma-tack. Tacamahac
“Nobody will know what it is or what you mean if you
call the oil Tacamahac!” they said. They were right but this understanding
deepened my sadness, it did not relieve it. “Maybe if more people were just to say, Tacamahac or Hackmatack, we
might remember something!” I muttered. And so it has been over the years,
private and public, my love affair with the tree called Black Cottonwood,
Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa, balsam poplar, Balm of Gilead, Tacamahac
by the Eastern native tribes, the Menominees and Forest Potowatomis, the
Ojibwas. Gigantic member of the willow or Salicaceae family of plants, she is
chief of all the trees in the Northwest and resides beside North American
rivers across the continent. She is the tree of life; cut her down and she
spawns 1000 children.
This one, this great tall old woman, will leave us
sometime soon. She will give way to new houses.
Bulldozers will wrench from the earth the web of roots holding this tree
intertwined with her alder and maple neighbors. Even if we could get a reprieve
for the queen herself, without that tangled mass of roots, she wouldn’t make it
through any wind of consequence.
At over 80
feet, she towers above every living thing on top of this hill. Her trunk, 20
feet in circumference at the base, pushes up from the earth. First to the
southwest, then realizing the extent of her lean, she corrects and pulls
herself back to the northeast in a sweeping curvaceous arch. Three human homes
are within the strike zone of her full crown. Countless creatures live in her
spreading branches and endless root system. It is estimated that she drinks
several hundred gallons of water each day from the earth she stands rooted
within.
Her leaves sing a new song each season. The bursting song initiates early spring, when warming temperatures of the vernal equinox raise enough energy for her to shatter the tight casings of her sweetly held leaves. Fairies use the scented bud casings littering the ground as hats to stay dry while dancing in the rains of spring. Next comes the unfurling song. A quiet, almost silent voice, it requires meditative repose to hear. Enter such a state beneath her spreading limbs and you will hear a sensuous chorus, a million voices opening their throats to the sky. Vibrating in pulses of life, they perform the dance of unfurling, with it comes the song… Listen… Leaves opening, preparing the task, soon to be theirs, of photosynthesis. That holy meeting ground where leaves use sunlight’s energy to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water in such a way that this cottonwood tree is the only possible result.
With summer comes fullness; the sound in the leaves
sated and moist. Warm breezes ruffle them in passing, setting the song free.
The great mother exhales warm with satisfaction as the job of growing is
realized. Gently, a midsummer breeze caresses a plume filled with seed and
releases it from the branch. Ever so joyously one fuzzy puff of summer snow is
joined by myriad more until the air is a swirl with millions of Tacamahac yet
to be! Tranquilly falling to earth and tumbling together in great fluffy
billows, clouds of cottonwood seed fill gutters and scamper across roadways.
This song,
too, is brief. Fullness soon passes. A raspy song, a scratchy song begins. She
holds this sound through the beauty and stillness of Indian summer until that
day when the gusts come. Those blustery winds of fall initiate the leaving
song. It is sung until the last leaf falls to the sweet earth below to begin the
journey anew. Dissolving, percolating, nutrient rich, seeping down to the roots
to be drunk up, it will feed new leaves the strains of the bursting song in Spring.
Last week, on the sunny day, we raked golden leaves from the grass. Leathery leaves hid children; bamboo rakes worked in circles gathering piles; piles moved to chickens, scratching, hastening, otherwise, slow disintegration. Yet, just beyond the hedgerow leaf resins slow the organisms that transform these leaves to soil. There, a carpet of golden leaves melts into blackness undisturbed; singing the soggy song, the dark and decomposing melody of metamorphosis.
I have picked Balm of Gilead buds nearly every
winter for 18 years. I have picked them from young trees along the banks of
We picked up the broken, scattered limbs of that October blow and heaped them onto a sheet in the living room. A few days later we picked the buds, the truly given buds, from the brittle branches. Next year’s leaf buds formed and tightly wrapped in their resinous coating to wait out winter storms. The unfurling song tucked inside each one. Tacky, propolis scented golden pitch clung to our coated fingers.
In a gallon jar filled with olive oil, the buds now steep, their yearlong maceration begun. A cotton cloth rubber-banded over the opening let’s the moist breath of the buds exhale. (Cover too tightly, the moist exhale sours the oil.) The long, slow marriage of oil and resin is underway. A daily stir the first 2 weeks (remember the beginning of marriage?), then the oil-bud mixture rests and matures in a cool, dark place. Occasionally, I check it, like I check a sleeping child, placing my hand gently on it’s back to feel the breathing. I smell it’s luxuriant, sonorous aroma. I tend its transformation through the dark months of winter. I listen to the songs in the naked; snow covered branches, the ancestors’ voices and dreams.
If, on your journey, you should have occasion to
pick buds from the tree called Balm of Gilead and infuse them into oil,
remember:
Anoint your skin lavishly.
Breathe deep the rich and
resinous oil!
Savor its warmth and
resonant scent
To ease
your daily toil.
Tacamahac,
Tacamahac, Tacamahac
Anoint your friends and family.
Sing songs of
transformation.
Tacamahac, Tacamahac,
Tacamahac.