Have you ever made friends with a tree?
That’s a question I never really thought about until I read an article in The Washington Post last week about the benefits of befriending trees.
It may seem like a weird question at first.
Um, no. I’ve never been friends with a tree. I’m not weird.
But as I read more of the article, I came to realize …
Oh yeah! I have been friends with a tree — lots of trees, in fact.
I just never had the awareness before to call it a friendship.
Friends With A Tree
I used to be an avid-ish runner. Whenever I got to the top of the highest hill in my neighborhood, I would run by and “high-five” the trees. It was a little moment I always looked forward to on my runs, like the trees were somehow telling me I did a good job and encouraging me to keep going.
If I ran into the same people who said hello and cheered for me at the top of the hill every morning, I would think of them as friends. Why not trees?
There’s also the dogwood tree in our backyard. An ice storm split it in half one winter and it never fully recovered. Each spring fewer and fewer branches bloomed. We would cut off the dead branches, but I didn’t have the heart to cut down the entire tree.
Not when there was still so much life in it.
I enjoyed so many mornings drinking coffee and looking out the window at the little dogwood tree and all the little birds gathered on it.
My dog Bella died peacefully under the dogwood tree a few summers ago. I felt like in that sacred moment, we were all connected — the tree and Bella and me.
Then last spring the dogwood tree had no more leaves, no more pretty white flowers. I felt so sad cutting it down. Then I felt so sad looking out the window at the empty spot in our yard.
Like a friend who was always there for me was now gone
The Washington Post article describes people experiencing a feeling of grief at the loss of a favorite tree. Again, I never had the awareness to call it grief.
But that’s what I felt — grief over the loss of a friend.
The Mother Tree
I’ve been low-key obsessed with trees since reading Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree. Trees are sentient beings, living together in community, sharing information and resources with each other. This is ancient wisdom that Simard, a forestry scientist, has proven. Her book describes how trees live together in community, which is fascinating to me.
But I never felt like I was a part of an amazing tree community. Simard lives among and studies ancient trees in Canadian forests. I live in the Northern Virginia suburbs.
And let’s be honest. While I like the idea of being outdoorsy, I’m really more of an Indoor Girl. I have no deep connection to the forest, spiritually or scientifically.
What if I didn’t have to trek into the forest to make friends with a tree? What if I started right here with the tree closest to me? And what if I was already doing that and just didn’t realize it?
The Cherry Tree
A few months ago, I was going through a challenging stretch and I started a new little ritual when I came home from work. While waiting for the garage door to go up, I would roll down my window and touch the branches of the cherry tree planted next to my driveway. I don’t know why I started doing that. It was just a little way of saying, “Hi! I’m home.”
What if my little coming home ritual is actually an extension of friendship to the cherry tree?
And what if — by giving me a place to release the stress of the workday and get grounded for a moment before coming inside to my family — the cherry tree was extending friendship right back to me?
I’ve always admired this cherry tree with its stunning pink cherry blossoms. It usually blooms around Easter and is a lovely spot for family photos.
My son and the neighbor kids used to climb up it when they were little.
The tree has always been here, but I never paid attention to it on a daily basis. It was just always there.
“A lot of people think of them as inanimate objects even though obviously they’re alive. But they’re just standing there, so I think they’re so unlike other living creatures that it’s easy to think of them as, basically, outdoor furniture,” Holly Worton, a naturalist and author of the book If Trees Could Talk, told The Washington Post.
Cherry Garcia
After reading the Post article, I decided to make an extra effort to be friends with the cherry tree. First, I felt like she needed a name.
Now I call her Cherry Garcia.
And now I roll down my window in the morning and say hello to Cherry Garcia while I wait for the garage door to go down. At night, when we walk the dog, I reach up and touch a branch to acknowledge her and admire how the streetlight glows through her branches. Sweeping up all the little pink petals off the driveway this weekend felt less like a chore and more like doing a favor for a friend.
Being friends with a tree is not weird at all. It’s actually kind of fun!
My teenage son thinks I’m totally weird.
However, Kaisa Vainio, a researcher at the University of Turku in Finland who studies human-tree relationships, does not.
Here’s my favorite quote from The Washington Post article:
“It’s not only weird people who have a tree friend,” Vainio said. “In our survey, we saw that people of all ages, genders and professions can have an emotional connection with a special tree. We have this culture that sometimes says if you talk about trees this way, you’re a ‘tree hugger,’ which is somehow bad. But you can be a normal person and have a good relationship with your tree, and that’s not a fairy tale, and it doesn’t require you to believe anything weird to have this connection.”
My teenage son may not be convinced.
But Cherry Garcia and I feel validated.
💖 Courtney
What about you? Have you ever been friends with a tree? Tell me about it. I’d love to hear your story.