Hugging Trees

Yesterday I hugged an old red maple, the matriarch of our back yard. Or rather, I hugged the last remaining trunk after the rest had been loaded onto a truck and driven off to be ground to dust and laid to rest somewhere that isn’t here. Even on its side, the giant, hollow slice of trunk attached to broken roots the size of wrestlers’ arms was a good head taller than me, impossible to get my arms around. So I did my best to rub my hands along the hollow edges of its weathered core and to whisper goodbye and thank-you, standing by its side.

There are neighbors my age who remember climbing this tree when it was young and others, nearly middle aged, who played with (and in one case, buried) toys in the maple’s wider shadow. We, the tree’s last caretakers, coddled it as best we could these past two years, and planted its future replacement nearby so the tired and scarred old thing would know that it could - some day - let go.

And then, after last week’s rain, the maple dropped to the soggy ground with less of a thud and thunder than one would expect - a quiet giving up the ghost. And, as if it had time to think about its landing, as if it still cared about this place, this yard, the tree’s biggest, longest, ivy-tangled branches landed on either side - within inches - of its replacement as if to cuddle and protect it…. or to pass the torch. So, too, the trunk itself made sure to miss the delicate spring garden just emerging amid its roots - a precious gift in life, a miracle in dying.

Just last week I watched two red-tailed hawks explore the tree as if looking for a place to build a nest. Blue jays and Carolina wrens crossed the yard to flit endlessly among its branches; squirrels picked at the red buds optimistic about yet another spring; a mama fox climbed some eight feet up the trunk to rest on the maple’s open arms and watch the yard. The animals will miss this tree. And I will too. Even as my eyes quickly adapt to its absence, even as the birds find other trees in which to build their nests, even as the fox finds a safer place to birth her pups. Time passes. Things change. Life goes on. But there is a moment when it’s right to mourn what’s lost and to take the time to hug and thank a tree.

Between Seasons

I trudge through lingering snow to where the sun has warmed the soil enough to reveal more white stuff of a different nature. The ephemeral snow drops have opened, covering with little crowns of white a remote hillside at the bottom of our yard, showing off for nobody but me and the two foxes I saw yesterday sniffling through the delicate flowers, checking out, I can only presume, the best place to raise their coming litter. They rolled there, like kittens, their shiny red coats first in the snow piles and then in the flowers before moving off toward what den I hope they’ll choose again - in full view of the house, but safely behind and beneath a fallen tree. It is that time of year - transitions. Days when the sun feels warm and promising, other days when the ice solid in the birdbath offers little promise that spring is on its way.

I love this season between seasons, the occasional chance to get out and feel the sun and weather the mud, to check my new trees and shrubs for buds that promise fruit and flowers and (hopefully) to assure myself new growth has not been eaten by the deer. It is time to order compost and eradicate the weeds that appear before my flowers have come back to life.It is the time when I can take stock of how my garden has evolved, to remember where I moved things, and what more I will manage when spring truly comes along.

This month, too, by coincidence (or maybe not), I am helping with three separate reunions that will happen over the course of spring and summer. Each represents a significant season in my life: my beloved and extraordinary elementary education (60 years), my high school graduation (55 years), and a reunion with my stalwart team of explorers I helped to cross Antarctica (32 years). It is disorienting. Each day moves me back and forth in time, recalling names and places, young friends now old - first loves, bosom buddies, confidants, and forgotten rivals: my rich life divided into seasons. I am looking forward to the events to come, even as I’m overwhelmed. Like my garden, I will notice the changes time has wrought on friends, the world, and me, how different paths and choices took us all to different places.. and for a lovely moment, brought us back again.

Spring Will Come

It is the first snow since we moved here nearly two years ago, and I am enjoying the crackle of the hardened crust beneath the boots I bought last year in hopes that snow would come. It is a damper, stickier, and more fragile variety than the snow I grew accustomed to in my years in Minnesota, but all the more precious for its fragility and short life. It may well be gone tomorrow.

I follow across our yard the deer, fox and rabbit tracks - signs that my closest neighbors explore the winter landscape, too, albeit in the hours before I have left my bed. I wonder if, from the underbrush, they now watch me cross the lane to check the rhododendrons whose optimistic buds have grown ever larger since the fall. The wet ice weighs the bushes down and coats the leaves. But the buds still stand impervious, strong and green, and ready to outlast the snow and lead us into spring.