The Search for Permanence

Last week I went to Stanley Park with some people from out of town. We chose to take the trail from Prospect Point to that weird rock thing (that’s the technical term by the way). Along the way we came across a tree stump that had been there long enough to have a quite large tree growing from it as well as a few smaller ones. One of the out of towners stopped to take a picture or two while his girlfriend pointed out that the view was even more impressive from the other side. Here is part of the other side of the tree:

This was hardly the first time I’d seen initials carved into a tree but I took this picture anyway and for the remainder of our walk towards English Bay to see the fireworks, found myself thinking about the initials on that tree.

I can’t help but wonder who DN and LN are or L and A and who loves (or loved) A. I am curious about their lives and their stories, most of all, about what has befallen them since those letters were carved into that tree.

Presumably, at one time or another they were taking a romantic stroll through Stanley Park. They stopped to get a closer look at this odd-looking tree stump and decided to immortalize their affection for each other by leaving a permanent mark on this bit of nature. Some were obviously equipped with knives or a similar sharp tool because the letters are carved clearly and deeply. Others may only have had a pen or a set of keys and just managed to scrape the surface.

In some cases it might have been a special moment between the two as one person (and I won’t mention gender out of fairness to both sexes) took out pocket knife of other sharp tool and carefully and meticulously carved the letters into the tree. I suspect this was the case for LN and DN. These letters were not haphazardly carved out. Someone took time to make sure they were clear. The other person watched, reveling in the romance of the moment and filing it away in memory. At that moment, they thought nothing could change the way they felt about each other.

On the other hand, perhaps some of these were one-sided tributes, expressing a crush or unrequited love. Now the letters become a means of expressing something that the person was perhaps not comfortable voicing aloud.

So what happened next? The tree is like the middle of a story without a beginning or ending. There is no context and no further explanation. We are forced to fill in the blanks ourselves with speculation like that above. So did LN and DN stay together. What about L and A? And does whoever loved A still feel the same. Yes, yes, silly I know.

The initials found in this tree as well as those carved into bus benches and walls, raise an interesting point. They express a desire to leave some kind of permanent mark on the world, even if it is as trivial and inherently meaningless as initials in a tree. We are all too aware of the brevity that surrounds so much of life and seek to combat this by leaving some kind of a trail. How many of us wrote our initials on a desk in high school? It’s a way of asserting our presence somewhere long after we’ve gone, even if no one will actually know who we are.

As for the pairs of initials, maybe that is both a desire to express love as well as the search for an amulet against a broken heart. Who knows, maybe carving initials into a tree is good luck.