The Tree Chooses you

Your favorite tree: prompt

Impressions from a sacred tree

In reflecting on my experience with our rooted sentinels, a realization arose. Trees have supported me for over forty years. Standing close by, beckoning for me to take notice.

The first expansive canopy was visible from my bathroom window. The bedroom too, but I preferred the small opening and the privacy to watch it marking off the seasons. As it lived in the midst of backyards, I had no access. But the ninth story view made it somehow my tree. I was the only one looking at it from here. Was it teaching me connection? But I never learned its name.

In my next abode, the trees moved in closer in, with one right outside my window. Now on the same level as its branches, the tree shielded me other eyes. At least until the winter. But then everyone is behind their curtains.

Again, rooted in another’s plot, I could not touch it, only observe. But we marked off time together and I despaired the annual invasion of gypsy moths. The tree always survived. Was it teaching me to move through adversity? I do not know its name. It does not mind.

Now, settled across an ocean, I live at ground level, with trees I can see and touch. Birch, catalpa, linden. Now I know their names. They burst early with green and are late to drop their leaves because they know I mourn them when they go to sleep.

But, because of rules, I cannot sit in the garden and rest my back against them to converse. Though I put a rebel hand against their trunks in greeting when I pass, daring a foot on grass to do so.

I had to go farther afield to sit. I never know what I’m looking for until I find it. Here need pushed me under a yew tree. The forces-that-be have their ways to get our attention.

I wandered into the park on a warm, early spring day, forgetting that every child within ten miles will be there too. I spotted their low branches in the corner and approached.

I say ‘their’ because three trunks had fused to make a single tree. A yew reproduces itself in the most remarkable ways. A trunk can grow out of a hollowed tree, A branch touching earth sprouts a sapling. A root may break through the surface to…

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