Befriending Trees

Living in Place

Hunting has taken me off-trail and into the woods where I have been befriending trees. It all started with Queen Victoria, the wolf maple rooted in a stone wall. She has a trunk as stout as that august monarch’s waist, and branches as thick as a Sumo wrestler’s thighs. Some of these limbs are raised to the sky as if protesting gravity, the same gravity that has claimed her other limbs to the forest floor.

Queen Victoria, the wolf maple rooted in a stone wall.

The first time I saw her, I snapped a photo. I was pleased and surprised when I found her a second time, and then a third, finally fixing her place in the forest and in my mind. Now, I know exactly where to find her, and I visit her each year. Each year, she has fewer branches to rail against the sky.

The Window Tree

I befriended the Window Tree next. The tree has a sturdy, unified foundation that separates into two trunks about three feet above the ground. Both trunks are good-sized, but one is stouter than the other. About twenty feet above the forest floor, the thicker of the trunks reaches out toward its less developed sibling, forming a window of negative space. Above this juncture, both trees continue separately, though the slender one adds girth, as if its twin is aiding its growth. I see a parable here, about how “you never lose by giving.” The stronger tree maintains its strength, and the other trunk grows more robustly with its sibling’s aid.

The Window Tree

A sat on a stone at the base of an oak one year, and found it again from another direction the next. For me, this was a triumph of navigating through the landscape without a marked trail. I write about naming the Stone Oak in Reviving Artemis in Chapter Ten: Another Season.

The Stone Oak: the stone is on the right, covered by my hot seat, with my rifle leaning on it.

More recently, I found what I call the Nautilus Tree for the remarkable way its trunk spirals around itself near the ground. I wish I’d snapped a new photo the last time I visited. It was an overcast day, and I could have taken a new photo, one without the shadow obscuring this friend’s most fascinating characteristic.

The Nautilus Tree.

I’ve also made friends beside the trails in the woods I ski through. In the four years I’ve been using these trails, I’ve watched this perfectly shaped hemlock grow from youngster to adolescent to almost adult, reminding me of my children who were first androgynous children, then awkward adolescents, and now breathtaking young adults.

I’ve enjoyed watching this hemlock grow.

Just last Sunday, I almost skied past this fantastic burl but stopped for a closer look. Imagine if we grew sculptural tissue around the pathogens that attempt to make us ill. In this tree, I see a toothless spirit smiling at all who pass on the trail, like a happy guardian, celebrating being alive.

Happy Guardian beside the trail.

“It’s trees that shelter me in my wooden house, trees that make my piano sing, and trees that I burn to keep me warm indoors. Treen contribute their needles and leaves to the forest floor. When trees die, they lie down and enrich the earth; alive, they carry the wind; they sigh and creak. Trees are guardians of the forest, hosts to insects, home to birds and small mammals; they provide shade, store water, and clean the air. It’s the color of trees that gives Vermont its Franco-English name—the Green Mountain State.” ~from Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress.