Sweet Embraceable Yew
After nearly four hours on the road, I all but screech into my driveway and leap out of the car. I want to see my people.
But unlike a regular person, I don’t head into the house into their awaiting arms. Instead, I throw on my boots and take off into the woods, because you see, my people aren’t people. My people are trees.
It’s not that I don’t have friends and family — meaning actual, real humans with mouths and feet and everything — it’s just that I don’t commune with them on a daily basis, like I do with my foresty friends.
My heightened arboreal ardor started during the pandemic, when I was newly out of my marriage of 20 years and struggling to go it alone. I couch and condo surfed for two years before landing in my current woods-life situation. Everywhere I stayed I walked, and everywhere I walked, I befriended trees.
For example, there’s a particular tree on a particular hill in Bethel I walked past every day for two months. As I did, I said, “Hi, Best Friend.” I said these words aloud because I wasn’t ashamed of this friendship, even if some might find it odd. See, it was not only a tree we’re talking about but also a dead one. You need a particular outlook to find beauty in a dead tree; to make it your best friend is another matter altogether.
I probably wouldn’t have become such good friends with the dead tree if things had worked out better with the horse that lived in the pasture at the foot of the hill. It wasn’t the horse’s fault. We got off to an awkward start. When I first moved to this outpost in Bethel and was still finding my way, I must’ve passed the horse several times on my walks without seeing him. But then one day there he was, grazing and gleaming the color of the horse chestnuts I used to collect as a kid. When you’re young, nature is always giving out prizes. All you have to do is open your hands
When the horse lifted his head, I waved. I want to say we locked eyes, but horse eyes are on the sides of their face, so it was hard to tell. But I definitely felt a connection. Sure enough, he started to trot towards me, but I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid he thought I had an apple or a carrot on me, which I did not. I didn’t want to lead him on and then disappoint him. I think he could tell I was regretting my wave, because he suddenly stopped trotting, dropped his head, and resumed feeding. From that day forward, he barely glanced at me. I don’t think he was mad. He’d just written me off.
Then came another move and the next thing you know, I had a new tree in my life. I know what you’re thinking. It was too soon. What about your other tree, the dead one that patiently waited for you to pass each day, asking nothing in return, huh? Well, it wasn’t like I was looking for a new tree. It just happened.
Unlike my Bethel tree, the new one is alive — an oak in a grove of oaks, which sounds grand, except the grove is actually just a snowmobile trail that empties out into a cornfield. One afternoon, when I was coming back from watching the crows peck for stray kernels, I crested a knoll and there it was — my new tree — just standing there like it was waiting for me, seeming to say, “You look like you could use a hug.”
Clearly, this tree could see right through me, so I thought, What the heck. I put my arms around it. This was no auntie embrace. I muckled right on. I pressed my cheek and chest into the rough bark and held close. I could feel my heart beating back at me. As I did, a sense of comfort seeped into me like sap from the tips of the tree’s mossy velvet boots to the tops of its branchy fingertips. It didn’t need to hug back.
Now before you start worrying about me, I know this is a tree we’re talking about. It’s not like I was going to run off with it or anything, which, of course, would be difficult with all that root business. Holding on was enough.
Gradually, I decided it wasn’t fair to hug just the one tree with so many others looking on, so now I try to divvy up the affection. Even the scrawny saplings get a piece of the action, although hugging one is pretty much akin to hugging yourself, which I am also not above.
And that is why when I return home from a trip (or frankly even an afternoon in Portland) I hightail it to the woods. Because, in this era of environmental peril, all creatures need to know they’re loved.
Elizabeth Peavey goes out on a limb here monthly.
