elizabethlevett

“They say, there is always a tree between you and it.”

Yes, I know, a bit chilling. It’s from a 1947 radio show called Escape! The episode, Taboo, a misleadingly exotic title, is the story of some people in a small, Slavic village who are trying to figure out who in their community is the werewolf whose been menacing villagers and feasting on their sheep. (Paul Frees says it. Great radio voice, you’d recognize him as the ubiquitous narrator from so many sci-fi movies.) This story came to mind after talking with a friend about the wide arc we all seem lately to be taking around passers-by, especially if they seem to be coughing. This scene plays out as we walk around a convenient street tree to avoid each other on a rare trip out of the house.

Being told you need to stay home is only harrowing because it’s really this: you need to stay home in order to avoid the possibility of becoming gravely ill.

It’s weird to stand in line outside of Trader Joe’s for forty minutes before you can go in – to stand at least six feet from the person in front of you and six feet from the person behind you. It’s weird to stand in line outside the pharmacy so you can go in and get cbd oil for anxiety. It’s seriously weird to hear that somebody got stabbed in a Safeway over a can of tuna fish. (“You want the tuna? Take the tuna. Go in peace.” Cough, cough.)

But what’s very strange to me is how I’m inclined to be in all of this. Normally every break from going to work is planned with relish long in advance. A week to myself?! The lunches out, the hikes, the projects, the sleep! I can’t wait to fill each day with lots of social time seeing good friends.

Lately though I just really want to be around a tree, or lots of trees. I find myself consoled just staring at one of my oak trees after weeding for a bit (“Someday I’ll get you all!”) or even just sitting still and listening to the bumblebees having their way with the ceanothus and those tiny, pink geraniums. My two coast live oaks are about twenty and twenty-five years old. They were born from acorns ferried out of the park by squirrels in their autumn hoarding frenzy. One of these little oaks grows on top of Boris’ grave. Boris, a beloved Russian Blue and the first in a long line of adopted cats who have spent and ended their days with us. It has survived the repeated intrusion of gall wasps and even an early surgical graft to repair its young and spindly trunk. The oak grove in the park is probably over a hundred years old by now and a favorite place to walk. These eternal climbing trees have seen season upon season of hot spells, cold snaps, drought, rain storms, and crisis after crisis we’ve gone through at one point or another, wondering who we can trust, who we should avoid, how we can protect ourselves. They endure. (As Grace Slick once put it, “Doesn’t mean shit to a tree.”) Their twisted branches lean gracefully down with a soft coating of moss and lichens and, if you look closely, lots and lots of little woodpecker holes. They are, above all things, tolerant, resilient, and undeniably patient. Qualities I find increasingly attractive.

Maybe I’m stretching the point. But a tree is the original axis mundi, the marker of the divine intersecting with temporal earth. Maybe it’s something in my Celtic roots. (Sorry, no pun intended, as they say.) Maybe it’s just the air around the trees, the quiet, the peace, the soft green, the curving limbs, the weathered trunk. When the world is shaken and I feel alone there is a comfort to being near a tree. All I can say is, I like to keep a tree between me and whatever it is that’s coming next.