What I Like About The Trees...

I’m rather obsessed with trees. I always have been. I think I have some sort of childhood attachment to them, as my youngest summers were spent in their rooms and under their roofs, more castles in the sky than beasts of the earth. Dear Henry would be proud of me. (That is, Henry David Thoreau, if you are not on a first name basis with him as I am.) What shall I say? So many trees in my life have been markers of my maturation—I’m going to take the fork in the road that leads down memory lane if you’d like to come, too.

So there was this apple tree in my backyard growing up. Beautiful, with knotty wood and small, hard, green apples that weren’t good for anything except attracting giant bees with their perpetual rotting state and for making dolls with apple heads, stick bodies, and leaf dresses. The thing about apple trees and children is that they get along due to their similar short stature. I could climb the branches with little effort and sit amongst the summer leaves like some sort of solstice queen. Yes, but all good, lovely things must end. One night a hurricane came and took the apple tree down. Why must girls be so envious of each other?

After the earth could no longer support the weight of the apple tree, it lay in my yard like a slain giant on the page of a medieval story book. The grass was its final bed. What is the saying? Dust to dust. There was some small panic rooted, if you will, inside an attachment to this particular tree that encouraged me to take a sample of the thing’s dark, woody bark and put it in a keepsake box with other assorted items middle school girls find it necessary to keep forever. Or at least until high school when you stumble upon an old box on the back of your bookshelf and startle at the fact that there are pieces of wood, and some unidentified yarn, and a cicada shell, and you throw it all away slightly embarrassed. The point is not why I kept the bark, but that I kept it at all. I couldn’t bear the thought of the tree having died and that my landscape would be forever changed, and that my summers would no longer include sitting under its leaves, dodging bees, and wondering what the little apples would taste like if I ate them.

Sharing the backyard was a cherry tree. Black bark and flaring pink blossoms in the spring, it was like an impressionist painter sliced open his soul in the air right in front of me. Perfect, golden amber oozed through the wood like a foreign substance from 1000 years ago. I was an explorer in my own little town; I was capable of discovering unfortunate beetles; I was really something interesting under that tree. Oh, under the cherry tree! That tree was host to where I felt the human magnet of attraction for the first time. My senses exploded as a boy tried to kiss me and then promptly begged me never to tell. I kept my promise a whole decade until his flaming hair faded to a mere childhood memory, a beautiful adolescent moment lost in time. How pure, how innocent. Yes, but all good, lovely things must end. Rotting wood and adults came one year and took the cherry tree down. Why must age ruin the outlook on everything in life?

In my older years, I understood that a decaying tree near the house is bad news for the nor’easters that came tearing through my region every so often. Yet, in adolescence, when one is so completely in tune with the tides of spring, and blossoming, and pink little flowers that litter the ground in a tender, glorious death, losing the cherry tree was indeed a true loss. I attach myself to things that are attached to memories. The cherry tree to me was not just roots and branches and pale petals, but a moment in the midst of a family cookout, where my ponytail was probably scraggly from playing tag, and a young boy suddenly couldn’t take his racing heart anymore. Now the memory is at once childish and profound, lingering in the recesses of my story line.

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After college, when I no longer played and lived in branches and danced with leaves, I took a walk through a state park and found that trees still affected me. Wondering what my life was about, as most people that age do, I noticed one tree standing tall and straight, branches lifted upward without reservation. I envied and admired this creation for knowing exactly what its place and purpose in the universe was and for taking it on with such grace. A tree, I know, has no say where it grows or has any ability to choose a different career path. Some trees are landscaping, some are benches, end of story. Yet, what a stunning metaphor for life! To stand tall and straight, with such reverent, noticeable praise for one’s creator, knowing you are in His hands and will, is everything I strive for.

I realized that this tree was a stunning symbol for life. It was life itself! There it stood, being and doing exactly what it was meant to be and do, and I stood underneath its canopy trying to understand how something so simple could have eluded me all these years. That tree reassured me that everything in life has a reason, and that if I am resolute in my beliefs and constant in my pursuit of accomplishing my purpose, I can grow up tall and straight and confident in what I am and who I am becoming. I took a picture of that tree and sometimes I look at it and try to compare my state to its. What a blessed landmark. It is a work in progress, just like me.

Maybe that is why I have always been drawn to trees. Maybe it is their unique qualities combined with their utter steadfastness. Maybe it is that they have breeds, yet personalities, and that their modified appearances throughout the seasons are not a dishonest camouflage of what they are, but a glimpse into their multi-faceted creation. A tree is not arrogant because it is breathtaking in the spring or despondent when it dies every winter. I wish I could be as such. We all weather storms, and sometimes we can’t anymore. Sometimes we are pruned. And don’t we all start small and take the shape of our environment? Don’t we all need sun and air?

Tony Hoagland, I think, says it best of trees and nature and why the human soul feels so drawn to the organic, natural, perfect ease of living:

What I like about the trees is how
they do not talk about the failure of their parents
and what I like about the grasses is that
they are not grasses in recovery

and what I like about the flowers is
that they are not flowers in need of
empowerment or validation. They sway

upon their thorny stems
as if whatever was about to happen next tonight
was sure to be completely interesting— (1)

Ok, let’s just take that in for a moment: how to be an unencumbered thing.

(1) from "Social Life" by Tony Hoagland