Trees

I.
In 1986, I moved with my mom and step-dad to the woods of Tennessee. Up to that point I'd grown up in residential Texas. My idea of "outdoors" was playing in the sprinkler in the front yard and not much else. I was an indoor-loving, tee-vee watching, air-conditioner-needing boy.
So this new world? The world 800 miles away from most of my friends, in a valley which blocked pretty much all television signal, and where I had chores? Yeah, I didn't like it at all.

But one day, I changed. I got off the schoolbus (I was in fifth grade), and something clicked. Literally. I heard and felt something in my head click, and suddenly everything in the world was different. I ran down my driveway in amazement, dropping my backpack along the way. I leaped across the creek and ran into the woods. Up hills, down hills, and probably touching every single tree I passed. Everything seemed like it was on fire. At one point, swinging on a branch, my weight and leverage caused a tree on the bank to uproot, and I fell into the creek. Soaked, I retrieved my backpack, went inside our house, and felt very excited to experience that all again.

From then on, outside was my place to be. I would spend every afternoon in the woods or in the creek. I loved mowing the lawn, I loved gathering firewood. When the weather was especially nice, I would sit on the roof and burn incense and listen to music. When it wasn't, I'd play outside in the rain or wind or whatever.
I still didn't care for the chores, but generally life was wonderful.

From that first day, I felt like I was in communication with everything. Not in some secret-language, "I-can-tell-trees-what-to-do" kind of way, but I felt like I was gaining knowledge constantly when I would engage in outdoor activities.

II.
I developed relationships with certain trees. There was two trees I sat between and pretended this was my home. The was a fallen tree that I vaulted over, crawled under, climbed upon. There were three hilltops on the property, but I generally spent my time on one of them. I didn't know all the trees, but I knew most of them.

I knew them in the spring, and in the summer, and the fall & winter. On my hill, many of the trees were evergreens. In the leafy summer there was one environment. In the winter there were two: the green land and the wasteland. The cedars were fun to run through, with snow flying off the needles, but the rest of the hilltop allowed running without getting whipped in the face, and offered piles of fallen leaves to dive into.

The cold air was bright and crisp. In summer, the air was thick with humidity, but my home on the hill was shaded. I looked forward to every season in its turn.

III.
I moved away from the farm in January 1999, and my family did, too.
I would go out there and enjoy the occasional afternoon, but not often.
When I moved into Nashville in 2001, I selected an apartment complex surrounded by trees. I would walk in those woods or, more often, the nearby state park.
Over the years, from one living situation to the next, I gradually phased from forest to city living. (I never fully forsook my connection, preferring to live in nature-enriched cities such as Tucson and Seattle.)

I moved back to the farm in 2011. I had only been back a handful of times since the house I grew up in burned down in 2003.

IV.
I walked up the hill, and along the paths I'd forged and followed for so many years. I was surprised how much I recognized. It wasn't winter any more, but it wasn't really spring yet, either. I walked around the wasteland, and it was much as I remembered. Then I walked into the cedars.

V.
Leslie told me once of a conversation she'd had with a healer in Tucson. Ilene was concerned, because there were termites around her house. She discovered that they were not only infesting the wood around her house, but also some of the nearby saguaro cacti.
She fretted and asked the plants what she could do--she didn't want to kill the termites; wasn't there some way to just lure them away?
"No," was the reply.
But doesn't it hurt?
"So what if it hurts?"

This conversation came to mind when I stood among the cedars.

VI.
I stood among the trees I'd spent so much time with. I could see all around me, and was confused. This was different.. how had it been before?
I saw all across the hilltop, and marveled at the fallen trees. I had played on most of them, and there didn't seem to be many newly-down ones. I understood that this was not an unusual number of fallen trees, and yet I had never before seen how many there were. They were amazing. There were trees I had balanced across twenty-five years prior, and trees I'd known both up and down. They were in various states of decomposition, and I took in the culture as I looked around.
The trees had taken in elements from the sun and the dirt and the rain. Those elements formed the bark as well as the pith, the branches and the roots. Creatures lived in the trees--inside and out.
And then the trees eventually fell over, dead. Nothing stopped, not even for a moment. Nothing even changed. Ants walking on the trees continued walking on the trees. Sunlight continued hitting the trees, and that sunlight continued to be absorbed and used. The bits changed shape, from solid to crumbly. This is where the dirt that knows how to grow the trees comes from.
The process took years in our eyes, for the object to change from tree to not-tree. But removing the concept of "tree," everything just carried on, just as it had done before we knew it was a tree, and will do after there's no tree to see there.

And then I remembered that something was different. I imagined a day from my past, running through the trees.. what was different? And then I realized.
I could see the hilltop. There had always been needles on the trees, blocking my view. And now there weren't. I looked up. There were needles on the top thirds of the trees, but the branches were all bare below that.

I remembered Ilene's conversation.
"So what?"
I had just spent several minutes taking coming to understand that the moment we call death never really comes, and the process we call death is absolutely essential. Why get worked up now?