Talking to the Trees

 

When a friend received bad news about her cancer, I thought, “I’ll talk to the trees.”

Bear with me for a moment. I used to light candles, think of those who needed support, and prayed. I often still do, but talking to the trees seemed to be the right thing to do here.

Morning Fog

Before dawn, fog moves up from the river, through the forest, and fills the woods behind my house. It’s a bit gloomy. Yesterday we had sunshine, and the brightness brought a surge of energy. Today, not so much. I want to put on a sweater, sit in a chair by the window, drink hot tea, and read a book about someone else’s adventures.

As the sun rises, the white particles of mist turn and twirl on the whims of the breeze. It looks like a cloud of fine snow is dancing.

Then I notice.

We Are Trees

Tiny buds on the trees are giving the woods behind my house a light green sheen.

Last week I noticed a beautiful bare tree. Without any leaves, its entire structure was visible —the trunk, main branches, even the smaller branches as they tapered out into thousands of tiny fingers. The tree was so symmetrical that I gazed at it in admiration, and then I had to leave because I was in a car at a stoplight.

We are like trees.

Old Trees and Landscapes

There’s a street near my house that had a small woods of majestic, large trees hanging over the road. It provided cool shade even on the hottest summer day. Some trees were perhaps one hundred years old. For one block it felt like walking through Sherwood Forest with its thick trunks and dense canopy.

It used to be a space that made me linger and encouraged me to breathe deeply and get my bearings as I headed off to begin my day. That small woods made me happy.

Invocation of Trees

The trees, now naked of leaves, stand proud in the woods behind my house. They hold their strong bodies against the cold and rise up to the sky, rise up with their arms open in thankfulness to Creation for the year that has been, rise up in reflection and praise.

The birch trees twirl in the breeze with open hands like whirling Sufis, reuniting heaven and earth. The pine and fir trees, heavy with snow, bow their heads and scatter their resinous incense on the air. The oak trees feed acorns to the squirrels who have slept in, and protect nuthatches and wrens with their stout branches. 

Yosemite Tree Notes

This week, forest fires are burning in Yosemite and threatening groves of giant sequoias.

In the late 1800s Sir Joseph Hooker said he had never seen a coniferous forest that rivaled the Sierra's because of the grandeur of its individual trees and the number of its species. 

The Ahwahnechee and their ancestors lived in Yosemite Valley for hundreds of years. Acorns from black oaks made up 60 percent of their food.

The prime growing area for the ponderosa pine is in the Sierra.

Trees With Leaves

The woods behind the house now has hundreds of interesting trees with a variety of leaf shapes and colors.  For months this winter I saw only bare brown trunks and branches that basically looked the same, so I looked right past them to the hill beyond.

People are like trees, and what makes people interesting are their differences, their peculiarities, their way of talking and thinking, the way they stir their coffee when they’re perplexed, or maybe they prefer tea over coffee. 

What makes us valuable as friends is sharing how we see situations from a different perspective.