My Best Friends Bark

I know I don’t look nor­mal, so why would you expect me not to talk to trees? Trees were and always have been among my first and best friends. It was even a tree that first taught me to stand up on my two hind legs.

Trees teach me sci­ence. They taught me about grav­i­ty – about how grav­i­ty holds you safe­ly and allows you to learn to bend with the winds of change while still stretch­ing towards heav­en. In Autumn, trees have taught me that how­ev­er beau­ti­ful a thing may be, we must even­tu­al­ly let them go to the grav­i­ty of time.

I could not live with­out trees; they are the love of my life. Those leafy ladies breathe oxy­gen into me as I breathe car­bon diox­ide into them. It is a very per­son­al way of inter­be­ing just as excit­ing and enliven­ing as a French kiss.

A tree can­not heal a wound by replac­ing dam­aged cells. The tree grows a scab around the wound to pro­tect itself from infec­tion and sim­ply wears the wound as a scar while it goes on with the busi­ness of grow­ing. I’m still try­ing to learn that teaching.

There is a neu­tral­i­ty in trees. They give shade and shel­ter with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. They give blos­soms to bright­en and scent the how­ev­er drea­ry world around them. They impart mys­tery and mag­ic by turn­ing their soul­ful flow­ers into nour­ish­ing fruit. Trees nev­er ques­tion the wor­thi­ness of those who receive their gifts. Without striv­ing to do any­thing out­side of their nature, every­thing is done by their being, every­thing of their cre­ation is accomplished.

A tree does not think in the same man­ner as I,
yet ‘It is.’ Because of the trees, ‘I am,’ I am.

Just because I talk to trees, do not think I know their lan­guage or can inter­pret for you. I am still learn­ing. These days, I am just now learn­ing the secrets of roots and their mys­te­ri­ous ways.

Only you can pre­vent your­self from get­ting to know a tree.