Any Tree in a Storm

Before the storm hit, a dried dahlia
strikes a beguiling pose.

Afternoon light added a sparkle to coneflower,
which is now under a blanket of snow.

The dog and I are comfortably snuggled into the sofa this afternoon. The heat is thrumming, a comforting white noise that we sorely missed these past 24 hours when a storm hit Wednesday night. It knocked out our power and took down several limbs on my maple tree (damaging our gutter). It also severed one of my new dogwoods and crushed one of my old ones.




The dogwood that was crushed was the one that sheltered my chair. Its branch, which is now hanging from the trunk by a woody thread, was the one that literally created the rooftop to my shade garden. The overhead leaf cover was so dense, I could sit in my chair in a light rain and be almost completely protected from any raindrops. The dogwood must have been decades old. It was among the original backyard plantings that came with the house when we bought it 25 years ago.

I've taken on an almost magical, mystical appreciation for trees lately. I feel rather certain that they share something akin to human-like traits and speak to us in ways that are both spiritual and real. I read somewhere that if you were patient with a tree, visited it often, took shelter under its branches, even brought it gifts, it would reward you with a kind gesture or a very real-world acknowledgment. And so I beg of you, don't make fun, but I am a tree hugger. I like to wrap my arms around a tree and place my cheek against its trunk to see if I can feel the pulse of its life, the water surging from deep within its roots as it travels up through its trunk and out to its branches. The temperature of the trunk of a tree is often exactly what I crave, depending on the season. On a hot day, the trunk feels cool to the touch and in the winter, it generates warmth.

The branches of the now-destroyed maple are all strewn about our side property. Some of them are literally the size of a good-size tree. Had they hit our roof, the huge logs would have caused some very serious damage. And yet the space between our houses is little more than a mere 20 feet. How is it that the tree managed to drop its branches into such a narrow passageway, with only a brushing glance to the gutter?

Down the street, a massive American beech tree split during the storm at its apex and fell as if it was trying ever so hard to minimize the damage. A direct hit to either of the houses would have been tragic. At the time, I'm told, the family was upstairs putting their young children to bed. Two massive branches are indeed, lying across the back slope of their roof, but the house remains intact.

A few years ago, I watched from my back window during an afternoon summer storm as a tree split during a brutal wind surge. As it fell, I was certain the tree was consciously twisting and turning, as if it meant to lay itself neatly into the narrow space between the houses. No one was hurt and damage was minimal.

I'm not saying that trees don't cause terrific damage during storms. Of course we know they do and someone did die when a tree fell on their car on Wednesday night. But I wonder, sometimes, if they do try very hard not to. 

So when Jim asked me Wednesday night if I wanted to sleep in the basement in case a tree branch were to fall on our bedroom roof, I told him no. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. And for some reason, I felt safe. The Putterer

Tree Hugger

That thou, light winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
John Keats

I read recently that if you wrapped your arms around a tree and embraced it, you should not be surprised at all to sense within the mighty trunk a kind of pulsing, not unlike that of a heartbeat. It is in fact the life blood of the tree--its sap--rushing heartily within the towering structure, and circulating from branch to branch, and from leaf to leaf.

The term, "tree hugger," so often a pejorative, gives me pause, for otherwise, I might run out this very afternoon to see if I could in fact detect the "heartbeat" of my favorite tree.

Trees made an impression this past week. I was off from work and so had just a bit more space within my harried brain for pondering other matters. And so with the bitter cold of winter and no garden to tend to, I went for a walk in my park, Sligo Creek. Just as Emerson predicted, a "woodland walk" did prove to be a salve to my "worst wounds."

Quickly shedding office angst, the naturalist in me leaped to attention when for the first time in all the years that I have walked this same path, I suddenly noticed a separate grove of unique trees within the greater woods. In the absence of leaves in the forest canopy, their distinct smooth-skinned, gray-white bark stood out vividly in the sunlight and I saw them as if they had just sprung newly from the ground. It was an army of American Beech trees. They marched down the ridge from the apartment buildings above the stream and advanced across the creek bed before ascending the opposite ridge. (The one above, I snapped with my cell phone camera. Its branches seem to be lovingly embracing the tree alongside it, a tree hugger tree?)

Now, I must confess that when it comes to trees I am as ignorant as they come. A tree is a tree is a tree. And I have looked at them all my life without seeing any distinction. But a new friend, Donald Culross Peattie (1898-1964), a naturalist and a botanist, who studied French poetry before training his attentions on American plant life, is my mentor.

A 2007 reissue of his 1948 field guide, A Natural History of North American Trees, is quickly looking careworn and well-used in my possession. Like any of my compulsions, I've made trees a hot topic around the Lieberman household, and having found an online guide to the trees of Sligo Creek Park, I've attached a mass of stickies to the pages of the Peattie guide to cross reference what is available locally with what is available within the book's pages.

The Beech Tree, which Peattie says is "all that we want a tree to be," has a vast range across North America, from Nova Scotia in the north, to Florida and Texas in the south, and west as far as Oklahoma. "The elegant clear gray of the bark extends from the trunk to the main mighty boughs, then to the hundreds of branches, and out to the thousands of branchlets. So that when the tree stands naked in winter it seems to shine through the forest almost white in contrast."

And that was what caught my attention on my winter woodland walk.

I am educating myself now on the trees and from my garden chair, I newly recognize in my view a magnificent American Beech tree in the grove behind my neighbors' houses. Almost luminescent, it stands in stark contrast to the more slender tulip poplars, and the towering oaks and the diminutive holly and pines in our neighborhood forest.

And that is the very tree that I wish to hug. Sadly, those neighbors are not my "bestest" of friends so I'm quite certain that if they caught me in flagrante dilecto with their tree they might call the police. So instead to pay homage to my new friend, I might sneak down there and slip it a small gift. I'll lay at its base a bundle of rosemary, perhaps. And then I'll give it a quick hug. The Putterer