In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be
static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical
ones, they seem to move through me. ~John Fowles
The old maple.
I have always found it very satisfying to be in the
company of trees. Their solidity suggests strength, their rooted-ness implies
stability, their forms define beauty. They are living breathing entities with
whom I have shared a communion for as long as I can remember.
I first fell in love, as a small child, with the
locusts and the huge maple that grew in our front yard. In May the two locust
trees, one on either side of the porch, dropped their sweet, spring-scented
catkins. The sticky yellow cases that bore them split and fell, littering the
lawn. The maple was an enormous old tree that had a protuberance near its base
that we children used as a seat. A sturdy limb reaching out across the lawn
held our rope swing and under the board seat was a dusty circle made by our
pushing feet where the grass would not grow. In the spring, the tree would drip
sweet, sticky sap. In the fall it was crowned with orangey-yellow leaves and in
the winter its bare branches wove intricate patterns against a frozen sky.
In later years, I made friends with all the trees
in my neighborhood, with the giant maples, the sighing pines, the eerie black
locusts that lifted their twisted limbs to the sky. I came to know the elm that
leaned over the board railing at the brook, and the sycamore that dipped its
toes into the river where it curved around a broad meadow. I sheltered from the
rain under the hemlock boughs in the back yard, planted flowers in the rock
garden under the big pine outside the kitchen window, leaned against the birch
tree at the edge of the lawn to watch the sun fade in the western sky.
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Wherever I’ve gone, I’ve made friends with the trees around me. I can
wrap my arms around them and feel their strength and immutable-ness when I am
sorely in need of a hug, rest my tired back against a sturdy trunk, send wind
messages to my distant children via the leaves and whispering boughs, and
understand magnificence from their ability to endure.
