Courtesy: Joseph Mackereth
Someone there is that loves a tree. It’s Molly!
I was standing under a large cottonwood tree recently, admiring the hefty canopy and enjoying the shade, when I realized just how much trees mean to me. Whenever I am in the woods, I feel happy. I think it should be required that whenever you’ve watched the news, you must go stand amongst trees for a while to recalibrate your stress levels back to a more manageable state.
This is lifelong. When I was a child, I evaluated everyone’s home on whether or not there was a good climbing tree in the yard. You could have the fanciest mansion ever and if you did not have a good tree, it was worthless to me. Travertine marble foyer? So what. Where’s the tree?
If you went to school in Virginia, your fourth grade experience included learning to identify trees. I remember pressing leaves between wax paper sheets to make my book of trees to present to the class. Talk about a subject being right up my alley. I thought this project was the best homework assignment ever.
When I lived in Northern Virginia, the overly enthusiastic developers took every cow pasture they could find and filled them with mini-mansions. You could be standing in your own home and be closer to your neighbor in his house than you were to your own family members in your house because the huge houses were planted that close to each other. Because there wasn’t a tree in sight, the houses looked like lumps of cookie dough on a baking sheet. I cannot imagine living in a house without a tree.
Years ago, my sister and I took a girls’ weekend away at the Peaks of Otter Lodge in Bedford, Virginia. What did we do? We climbed trees. Mind you, we were both over 40 at the time but a really good climbing tree is not to be ignored. They have several wonderful climbing trees around Abbott Lake and it was wonderfully peaceful. I highly recommend the trees at the lodge. I think they have other things to do as well, but we didn’t get to any of them.
My grandpa and grandma had the very best climbing tree in their yard. I learned to climb on that tree. It had a limb that swung low, so it was easy to get started as a short person. It also had a swing, which made it better than trees that didn’t have swings. I spent hours on that tree.
The only downfall was that it had a lot of exposed roots and until I got my glasses, I fell a lot. I watered that tree with blood from my skinned knees but I didn’t care. When I got glasses, the ophthalmologist told my mama that it was a wonder I knew that trees had leaves, my eyesight was so bad. My mother informed him that I had to know about leaves because I was always climbing up trees and sitting among the leaves. I guess I was getting close enough to see the leaves without corrective lenses.
One of the poems I read in school was “Christmas Trees” by Robert Frost. My reaction to it was insult. The audacity of the city slicker offering a mere pittance for all of Mr. Frost’s beloved firs. Mr. Frost, chase that ignorant man off your property and don’t let him come back, ever. I was heartbroken to learn that not everyone was emotionally attached to trees. How can that be?
It is my hope that when I move into my next house, there’s a good, solid, welcoming tree in which I can build a treehouse. I don’t think I can shimmy up a rope to get in it now, so proper steps might be needed, but I will still spend hours in my beloved trees. When I was little, most of the trees surrounding our property were pines and they simply do not accommodate a good treehouse. You need a hardwood tree like an oak or a sycamore for a solid house. Pines dance too much in the wind. Not stable enough for a reading nook in the sky. A treehouse is the height of perfection. What could ever be better?
I wish for you the peace of being amongst the trees. Turn off the news, find a good tree, make friends with it, and breathe.
The story above first appeared in our July / August 2022 issue.
