Chapter I: A Certain Desperation
Oh, what Hawthorn means to me is difficult to name; it lives somewhere beyond words, but I will try to speak it anyway...
This is an eight year tale condensed as best as I can manage to share my interwoven journey with and for, Hawthorn. It’s the surface, the tip of the iceberg of the meaning it has carried, a path I think I’m still traversing. I wrote this in a practice I’ve been doing lately called After | Thoughts, where I process events, experiences I couldn’t write while they were happening with intention and purpose. I began this piece at the beginning of May, on May Day, when Hawthorn is often celebrated, I began to ponder…
Hawthorn eluded me for many years, seemingly just beyond my grasp. When I first tumbled down the plant rabbit hole, in my little cottage garden tucked behind a picket fence, I fell head over heels for flowers. Akin to Alice in Wonderland, I could hear their whispers. Pansies and Meadowsweet dancing in the breeze, each with a song steeped in a meaning I longed to decipher, a calling home of sorts.
Hawthorn was a blossom I desperately wanted to encounter. For its magic, its mystery, I sought out its balm. For generations, folks have approached Hawthorn with reverence, knowing that it carried both beauty and unfathomable power. A keeper of boundaries, a protector of the heart, and a reminder that some of life's deepest wisdom is unearthed at the threshold betwixt grief and joy, endings and beginnings, the ordinary and the magical.
I remember a year when, driving down country roads in May, I would frenetically pull the car over whenever I spotted a lone flowering tree that resembled Hawthorn. I had learned to make and attune to flower essences from my herbal teacher, Asia Suler of Mothering Depth and opened Earth Star Herbals selling flower essence remedies. In her teachings, I recalled she shared how she’d make flower essences from flowers she happened upon, often with nothing more than a water bottle in hand, ready to meet the moment as the medicine arrived in her life.
Asia writes:
“Hawthorn is a gatekeeper, healer, and protector of the heart. Our hearts are organs of perception, attuned to recognize life’s magic. Hawthorn helps nurture the heart so we can perceive the hidden realities that surround us and experience the enchantment of the earth.
As a protector of the brokenhearted, Hawthorn can help transform long-held trauma as well as acute heartache. This powerful essence helps regenerate hope and release grief, encircling the heart with comfort and protection. An essential ally for sensitives, empaths, and those who feel overwhelmed by the hurt in the world, Hawthorn helps us hold better boundaries so we can focus our energy on the heart-led work we’re here to accomplish.
In Celtic lore, Hawthorn was considered a literal gateway into the Otherworld. Hawthorn essence shows us how to walk the path of the heart-centered magician, learning to trust our intuition and perceive magic in the everyday world.”
My desperation and desire grew. I reached out to folks and farmers in our locale, asking if they might have a Hawthorn tree on their property. One replied “yes”, but that I had missed its blooms. He promised to contact me the following spring.
I waited, steadily.
Gathering groceries at our farmers market one spring, I scooped up the last Hawthorn sapling at a table and rushed home to plant it in our cottage garden. I watered it and observed it survive two harsh midwest winters, ultimately it never bloomed for me as we left that home and that enchanted garden, to build our country home.
When hiking on the land, ephemeral white flowering trees perpetually drew my attention, seeking. Apple, Wild Plum, and Chokecherry and none of them were Hawthorn, or so I thought. I settled for the dried hawthorn I could find at the co-op. Enjoying dried berries simmered in autumn cider, dried leaves and flowers steeped in tea, I yearned to cross paths with Hawthorn in real life, to bask in her vibrant medicine, to find out for myself. I even wrote a monograph about Hawthorn in my book, Our Kindred Home, accompanying the illustrations of my dear friend, Fran.
Two years after my copious failed attempts to grow and experience Hawthorn’s fresh blooms, in twenty-twenty four, life’s twists took me to Switzerland for the first time. My mother’s younger brother had been diagnosed with colon cancer shortly after visiting our home for a Thanksgiving gathering. Disbelief struck. His disease progressed quickly. By early spring, the July trip we had planned was no longer soon enough. A few days after my birthday, on April 27th, my paternal uncle called and said we needed to come and see him. My mom hopped on a plane from California and I on one from Chicago, and we landed in Switzerland to meet its beautiful, lush rainy spring.
At the time, we were still carrying so much hope that this wouldn’t be the last time. That he would find a way and that they would find a treatment.
On our walks to and from his family’s apartment to the hospital, I spotted a white flowering tree. And sure enough, I entered my first encounter with Hawthorn. This heart medicine I’d been searching for, for years. It was a relief, bittersweet, her presence assuredly meant it was my time.
A fortnight later, I returned home from my travels. My son and I were standing at the edge of the pond, together listening to the late May birdsong and he, attempting to catch tadpoles, when he noted an odiferous breeze.
“Mom,” he yelled, “it smells like death in the woods.”
I paced around the edge of the pond, which was littered with Wild Apple trees, and there kin stood. A Hawthorn tree, at the edge of our woodlands, tucked behind the Old Grandmother Oak I had strode past hundreds of times, stood a gnarled old Dotted Hawthorn nearing full bloom, a rare native variety, I would later learn.
It struck me like the fae had been playing their tricks all along. I, searching, seeking, longing for something that had been here all the while. Astonished, I screamed and rushed to snap photos of the tree. The moon was nearing full and a rain begun to fall. I planned to return the next day, in the sunshine, to ask the tree’s permission to make a flower essence.
Before I could make it back out, not a day later, my uncle passed. Grief overtook me.
The path continued on…
Ahh, the elusive hawthorn. You don’t see these much anymore. Makes me want to plant another one at this home, in N Wisco. Thank you so much for your writing, it’s beautiful.
I have them in my front and back yard. I love hawthorn berries in my tea. Nice read, Alyson ☮️