Photo © Elizabeth Robinson
I am grateful to share my Natural Wonderings/Wanderings. I write them as time and spirit allow. The idea and title were conceived one 
day many years ago when exploring outside with my young family. It would be quite a few years more before I began writing them in 2008. There are many connecting points over the years in observations of nature, life, and seasons. One for me is a strong sense of home-place, specifically in our little corner of the world here, in Southwestern Ohio. This sense of place helps carry interrelatedness over time and retains a comforting, familiar thread over endless variations within the cycle of nature and life.
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Tall, stately, and massive, Sycamore Trees glow white against blue, winter skies and shine silver on moonlit nights. To Native Americans, they are the “Ghost Trees.”
They mostly march where the drinking is good, lining the banks of our Ohio rivers and creeks with muscular branches, open to the sky. Smooth roots intertwine and thrust into the water like thirsty elephant trunks, offering complex channels of watery crevices where fish can hide, forage, and reproduce.
Their gigantic leaves invite imaginative play and were a favorite of my children’s “natural wanderings.” Plop one on your head if caught in a shower and dashing for shelter. How about setting afloat an armada of makeshift boats in the creek, or using them as fanciful plates for an impromptu, make-believe picnic or take-along snack?
Hawks and other raptors favor their towering height and open branching, which affords them quite a view. I wonder how it might feel, having so high a perch and so far a view?
Clinging to the bank and sometimes slumping almost horizontally, they can stretch out over the water, creating an inviting spot to creep out and sit, dangling your feet, and daydreaming as the water slips by. By night, these same spots are favorite haunts of raccoons, who leave obvious signs.
For their expansive size, Sycamores sport almost silly, dangling seed balls that drop and disintegrate only as winter fades into spring, leaving behind a potent potential of seed, tiny, fluffy, and easily wind-borne.
Their attributes are the natural world’s beautiful metaphor for a loving parent, always there, arms open wide, strong, steady, and rooted, offering solace, peace, shade, and shelter.
Sycamores are a comfort.
Elizabeth (Schickel) Robinson has always lived in Loveland, married and raised a family here. Family, faith, service, community and creativity are most important to her. She is an artist driven to notice and bring beauty to others including creating commissioned works of art for hospitals and churches. She cares about our culture and wants to build opportunities for community and connection to God, each other and creation. She recently retired as a Registered Nurse at Cincinnati Children’s where she was privileged to care for patients and their families. She strives to live with her eyes wide open, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary in life and nature that surrounds her.
