Mistletoe & the Center

My dog, Ursa, died last December. Calling her “my dog” is misleading - her role in my life was more like a best friend. We were rarely apart. The physical loss has left a tremendous Ursa-shaped hole in my life and everything I think, make, do still relates to her. As part of my grieving, I made it a point to still take the hikes that she and I used to do together. I wanted to avoid them, to mark them off in my internal map as off limits and never have to come face-to-face with the pain of moving forward without her next to me. But I have experienced enough change and death in my life to know it’s best if I keep going and let the grief pour out where it wants. 

I hiked each trail in order of how much time we had spent together on them. I brought my family with me for most, partially for support and partially to try to establish new memories in an effort to widen my associations in these places. The one that I saved for last was easily the most painful. Ursa had developed cognitive issues and I had to keep her hikes leashed for the last year of her life, but this field and its surrounding trails were the one place she still could run free without worry. I finally convinced myself to take the trail that felt like it still had heavy remnants of her presence.  

I was so sad on this hike. I hung behind my family a lot and felt like I kept hearing or seeing things, still feeling Ursa through the wind. I cried a lot. I felt displaced. But I kept going, knowing that avoiding these feelings would be more harmful for me in the long run. Having deep moments of grief is no reason for me not to do something. I have to let it well up and flow out of me or it bleeds into other parts of my life that cannot properly tend to it. I continued on, right to the hidden waterfall that was always the marker to turn around and head back. And it was there, at the end of the most miserable hike of my life, that I found a bough of mistletoe on the ground.

Despite never seeing mistletoe in person before, I knew exactly what it was. It’s not a plant that looks like many others. It forgoes the soil to root itself up on tree branches, closer to the sky than any other plants I know. It grows outwards from the center in all directions and creates a chaotic-looking tangle in a spherical shape. But upon closer inspection, you can see that it’s actually comprised of systematic forking branches. White berries are what you would usually see dotted throughout the plant in the winter, but sometimes you can also find clusters of tiny, yellow, succulent-like flowers. This version of mistletoe was Phoradendron leucarpum, otherwise called American Mistletoe or Oak Mistletoe. Its native range is along the eastern US and it primarily grows on mature oak trees, although it can be found on other hardwoods as well. Its growth is slow and steady, only 2 feet’s worth per year, meaning it can take about 50 years to spread out over just an acre. Indigenous people used it to treat a variety of ailments from heart problems to nervous disorders to skin issues. A common thread through a lot of these medicinal uses is that mistletoe is meant to soothe.

Finding this gift on my hike altered me immediately. The feelings of heaviness that weighed me down were suddenly lifted into the tree branches where mistletoe lives. My grief slipped into wonder and awe. We had taken this trail more times than I could keep track of, but we’d never once seen signs of mistletoe here. I scanned the trees for a long time but couldn’t place where this had come from. It was still very fresh and the site of breakage was new. The berries and leaves were perfectly intact. I was completely baffled how and why this ended up in front of me, especially disarming me during one of my most painful moments of processing Ursa’s death. 

As I held it in my hands, I remembered that I had worked energetically with this plant a year ago, before Ursa’s health began to decline. I spent a lot of time learning from it and was about to begin a painting of it, going as far as to have it taped up and drawn out. I shelved the project before I could put color to it because I decided to move my work in a different direction. I went home with the mistletoe and found my old notes on the meditations and dreamwork I had done with it. They were all about Ursa. I submitted to the synchronicities at this point, and spent every day for the next month cultivating a relationship with mistletoe.   This was my first time working with a plant that doesn’t live on the ground, and I had to change my perspective. I usually look at plants from either above them or at eye-level, but this required my angle to switch. I couldn’t sit down with this plant, and there was no direct connection to the soil to study. I hung my piece of mistletoe above my head on my porch. I made sure that when I looked at it, I was forced to take in the sky and the tops of the trees with it. It was not lost on me that this mirrored my changing relationship with Ursa. She was no longer a physical being on this earth that I could interact with, that I could sit next to and see up close; she was now ethereal and untouchable, physically out of my reach. The perspective on my relationship with her was being forced to change.

I thought a lot about the parasitic relationship that mistletoe requires to survive up in the trees. I have often wondered if our capitalistic culture has demonized the idea of parasitism in ecology. If you can’t independently do the work yourself like everyone else, you are seen as a burden, something harmful, something that needs to be controlled or eradicated or fixed. When you search for mistletoe plants on the the internet, some of the first hits are how you should get rid of it because it will hurt your trees. In actuality, there would need to be a large amount of mistletoe on a single tree to do any sort of weakening to it. And even then, it just means the tree potentially cannot bounce back as easily from actual harmful circumstances like drought, climate change, root damage, or disease. Studies have shown a lot of complexity to parasitism, with many examples actually turning out to be mutualism - meaning both species get something that they couldn’t have gotten without the other. 

We are restricted to being human, meaning we will never get a chance to actually put ourselves in the role of other species to find out what their life and connection to the environment is like. We can assume, infer, deduce. We can give our best guess, but that is all it is - a guess. So maybe we can use our guessing to open up more scenarios for what parasitism is like, rather than default to believing the relationship is horrific and needs to be terminated. Imagine for a moment that the tree hosting mistletoe doesn’t mind. Imagine it feels honored for being the chosen site to host this otherworldly plant. Imagine if it recognizes the interconnectedness of all beings in its environment and is happy to provide to the overall ecosystem. Imagine if the overall wellbeing of the ecosystem is more important to the tree than its own individual identity. Imagine if the individual identity of the tree was better off because of the wellbeing of the ecosystem it was contributing to. Whose perspective are we even looking at when we say an organism is a parasite and needs to be eradicated? Is it for other humans observing nature in a detached way? Is it for the tree that hosts the mistletoe? Is it for the mistletoe that needs the relationship to survive? Is it the phainopepla birds that need to eat enough mistletoe berries to be able to breed the following spring? Is it the hawks that use mistletoe as a nesting site? Is it the great purple hairstreak butterfly that requires mistletoe for its courtship rituals and egg laying? Ursa had times and situations where she relied completely on me for her own survival. She could not have functioned without my caretaking. Would she be considered a parasite, too? I often see the margins between how things exist together as blurred. Where does something even begin and another end? Our own human bodies are home to more microorganisms than actual human cells. We are alive because we breathe, but the act of breathing itself is a symbiosis with the plants and trees that take in our exhaled carbon dioxide and provide us with the oxygen we need in return. When things die, they become dirt that provides the foundation for new life to grow and feed their offspring. It’s a constant dance to exist on this planet, meaning it’s impossible to survive if we separate ourselves from other beings. And I suspect organisms like mistletoe that are parasitic actually play a more vital role in this system than many humans want to give them credit for. 

When there is no clear separation, we can conceive that the center is everywhere. It’s just a point we choose and work outwards from. The angle we choose to approach something with can alter the entire way we see the world. Our perception is shaped around what we decide is important. But the world beyond the so-called individual is vast and continues farther than we can see. Considering where we are centering ourselves is a practice to help us integrate into the whole of our environment. How we relate to everything and how it relates to us is always intertwined, and our connections to each other and the natural world don’t stop just because we don’t acknowledge them.

Mistletoe’s lessons often center these areas of threshold, both in the co-mingled air between two beings and in the intermediary of a timeline. I feel fortunate to have this plant with me as I learn what my life will look like after this loss. During times of having just left one space but not yet having entered another, it can provide a gentle guidance to process with the present moment when you would rather rush through. Getting comfortable in liminal spaces is a necessity now, both for myself and for the collective. It’s hard to function while witnessing climate collapse and systematic harm on a daily basis. It’s hard to function when I buried a part of my heart in the soil with Ursa. So many sweeping things are happening that we are powerless to stop on an individual level, and with that comes a deep ache that is hard to sit with. But this is where I am, and this is where we are, and existing in these in-between spaces of life allows us the opportunity to cultivate the whole spectrum of emotions in these moments, not only the grief. Detatching expectations of what is on the other side of this allows us the gift of presence. It offers a chance to witness the beauty, surprise, and wonder in these transitional moments. There is still room to make art, tell stories, and connect with others.  There is still magic to be found.