The trees save me again and again. They seem to know me better than I know myself; they know what I need before I do. I feel held by them as I rarely know how to allow myself to be held. No matter the shape I turn up in, they are forgiving of all my human flaws. You’re supposed to be like this, love. They do not judge the way some humans judge. My queerness, my transness, my softness. My anxiety, despair, bouts of spiraling or rigidity: all neutral to positive in their view. No need to constrict me, so long as I am here, alive, awake, not embroiled in greed, hatred, or harmful delusion. They deem that I am mostly not (though who doesn’t have a sprinkling of mess? Unless perhaps they are a tree!)
There is a particular tree in Green-Wood Cemetery that called me to it last May (all photos are of my healing tree). I had been in a period of depression, trying to grapple with some childhood trauma that was fighting back at me before it would let me soothe it into some semblance of healing. I had hit this nerve, this pain so deep it seemed to have no bottom, this unbearable groundless aloneness and terror, and on one of my cemetery walks, this large old beech tree beckoned me into its fortress of limbs and enveloped me. The wind brought its branches to my shoulders, pulled its limbs back toward the sky, and once again they settled around me in an embrace. It was like entering a portal to some other dimension, and I have visited it many dozens of times since.
I visited in July when I was sure fascism was coming, and it helped me see that, even if they should come for me, I cannot let them push me into going prematurely. The tree knew me so well it knew to argue: You cannot do their work for them. If you must, then survive out of spite! You are meant to be here. There is a shortage of open hearts. You are needed.
Somewhat grudgingly, I remained.
And here we are, in a world plainly oppressive of so many different groups of people. Particularly vicious toward anyone trans or gender non-conforming. It’s the ugly world I feared. But the tree continues to tend me. Even when I am unraveling. Even when I have no hope or when hope is so tenuous. When rage predominates. Terror. Despair. Even when I am sometimes unruly or unreachable, it somehow pulls my wounded parts to nestle in its nooks. It continues to shield me, even in the exposure of winter, its branches only thinly enveloping me now, leaving me visible to anyone who might be around. It directs me to some wise solidity within me that it knows exists, no matter how I sometimes doubt it, so that being visible, while still vulnerable, might just be okay.
Poems written between November 2024 and now:
Co-regulation The lifting and settling as your branches float gingerly downward and reach for your own shadow, reminds me how to breathe again. The sun twinkles across your leaves, a silent symphony that catches and quickens my breath with the grateful recollection: being alive contains—not just the wounds of human failings— but countless tiny flourishes, glorious and ordinary and available for our attention.
Perhaps An Opening I wouldn’t vote for turbulence, but the trees present another view: may the wind shake loose these twisted branches like open arms to reveal a portal to another world of unforeseen spaciousness with gentler hands and sequins for stars.
Denuded, part 1 You have sheltered me all these months—hidden refuge, cathedral of leaves. When your adornment sloughs off, you’ll remain holy, but I will become more baldly exposed, not quite enveloped in your grace.
Denuded, part 2: The Tree’s Response What if being seen is not inevitable exposure? What if the light can warm you more readily now, as the air turns colder? A boundary fallen between you and the sun. What if there’s power in shaking off your leaves?
Solstice 2024 Sometimes staying alive looks like dying. The trees stripped down, disburdened of all but what is needed in that devouring cold and bending wind. And darkness which—though today begins to lift—feels inevitable as a sinking stone. But in letting go, they redirect to nourishment of root before the heavy snow can pull them down.
Micro Ecosystem The snow reveals a story that the grass cannot. I’m the only human visitor to my healing tree. My old footsteps now faded imprints under the crunch of a new layer undisturbed but for the tracks of the squirrel who scaled the trunk, the raccoon whose clusters of hands frolicked between the outlines of my boots of two days ago. Yes, the tree whispers, you are intertwined in all of this.
Thank you for reading! I hope that whatever helps to hold you in these difficult times is accessible to you, whether it is the trees or humans, animals or songs, poetry or movement. Or all of the above and then some.
That was awesome!
A magnificent essay, accompanied by beautiful, heartrending and healing poems, and lovely photographs. You need to publish a book.