Spring Trees

Tiny buds that I can’t see on trees in the distance are giving the woods behind my house a light green sheen.

Last week I noticed a beautiful bare tree. Without any leaves, everything was visible —the trunk, main branches, even the smaller branches as they extended thinner and thinner into thousands of fingers. The tree was so symmetrical that I gazed at it in admiration, then had to leave because I was at a stop light.

We are like trees and the branches are our lives –relationships, projects, work, and all of our interests over the years. As some of our interests end, those branches die and fall off. As people we knew in high school move away, those branches never develop any further. When we start new interests and relationships, new branches appear and grow. The roots and the trunk of who we’ve been remain strong and provide support for our new ventures.

A few days ago I went into the woods and found a tree that did not survive the winter. The bark on my old friend was beginning to come off in places. I’ve enjoyed the beauty of this tree over the years. I’ve sat under it when it was full and glorious in its summer green, and I’ve watched it sway back and forth in the wind and endured the driving rain of thunderstorms. A hollow in the trunk has already become a new home for squirrels. Soon its branches will let go under their own weight, and the tree will fall. Then it will become a home for insects and grubs, and attract a new set of birds. Its body will be reabsorbed into the earth and nurture the next generation.

Death is part of the life cycle, too, although I do not like the changes it brings. I mourn this tree’s passing.