A smoke tree on the corner of my street!

I love the smoke tree, now in bloom in Massachusetts (and here is a photo of one that sits on the corner of my street), which gets its common name from the beautiful smokey-pink, hazy, fluffy look of it’s flower clusters.

The smoke tree is a fabled tree, full of magic and mystery. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, mythologist and Jungian analyst, talks about the smoke tree in her audio CD The Late Bloomer: Myths & Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype (which is the fourth volume of Dr. Estés’ five-volume audio series known as The Dangerous Old Woman). She says the smoke tree is a teacher, and archetype of the transgressor.

The smoke tree shows us that a transgressor may not appear as we expect. Though some may see its delicate pink puffs of clustered flowers as a sign of fragility, the smoke tree is far from frail. The smoke tree is stubbornly resilient to all kinds of difficult environments, and Dr. Estes has found it growing between sidewalk cracks, miraculously winding its way through stone walls and quarries, as well as through the foundations of houses, and once she even saw one growing out of a basement window where the cellar floor was dirt.

She says the smoke tree is an elder, who teaches us about transgression. Finding a way to life through rubble, asphalt and stone, between the cracks the smoke tree shows us how we, too, can resist and transgress the what society tells us we cannot do. Some say smoke trees are ugly, but around this time of year when they are hit by a gust of wind, it releases beautiful smokey pink clouds of airborne seeds. When its leaves are crushed, they smell like crushed orange peel. The smoke tree is, indeed, an all-encompassing visual and sensory experience, rich with wisdom I get to be reminded of everyday as I walk by!

For more folktales about transgression, check out my blog posts on the Bird Woman Inside Us and the Wisdom of Herring.

As always, FeathersandFolktales offers nuanced reflections on our human entwinement with the wild, through the frame of folkloric tradition and hand carved linocut prints!

Reference:

Estes, Clarissa Pinkola (2012). The Late Bloomer: Myths & Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype (The Dangerous Old Woman, Volume IV). Audio CD. Sounds True.

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