“No matter where I live, I always try to make friends with a tree.  I find them so much like us in so many ways.  They have their feet on the ground, their heads in the sky…. They have good years and bad years, and yet they endure.  They know how to withstand all seasons, to be patient with adversity, to store up strength for hard times.  They are nourished by the land.  When the wind blows, they understand the power of the unseen, and bow their heads before it.“

This morning I had a very pleasant run along the canal.  The air was crisp and fragrant with the smell of damp bark, the sky blue and welcoming.  I feel alive when I am outside.  I think it is the only time I gain true perspective, perhaps even more than in a pew.  Even when everything seems insurmountable, the still, small voice that is ever-present, ever-calming says “go outside.”  It always works.  Absorbed into nature, my breathing regulates, my mind is invigorated, and my heart is filled with an unspeakable peace.  I’m put back into the puzzle, just as a piece, not as the picture.

I suspected that I might find a new tree today. There was something about the way the sunlight was cutting into the woods on a diagonal.  I thought that at any moment I would find one I hadn’t seen before.  Usually my hunches are right.  Before the bridge, there it was, shining white amid the rest of the dull greys and browns–a sycamore I had somehow not yet seen.  It looked young and eager, reaching toward the light.  Reminded me of me.

When I was little, I used to climb these really old, nasty trees that formed a border between our yard and a cemetery.  There was an old vine that made a rope of sorts, and I used to climb it as if it were a portal to another land like Narnia or perhaps the front door to my Swiss Family Robinson treetop chalet.   I was always a little scared that I wouldn’t be able to get back down again once I had started, but it was worth it to escape for even a short while.  At the top, I would look out over the cemetery and the corn field behind it and think about life and how much I still did not know.  I guess I was always the way I am deep down, even as a child.  I always felt older than everyone else, as if I knew things they did not know, not so much in a prideful way, but in an “old soul” kind of way.  I think I understand why people believe in past lives and reincarnation.

Sometimes these senses of knowing are so strong that it seems I’ve actually experienced them. Climbing those trees and looking out over the graves in the cemetery taught me more about death than anything else. In fascination, I watched people as they visited the gravesites.  Many times, the visitor was one person, preparing the foot of the stone for fresh flowers.  He or she would wipe away the debris, grass clippings, and old leaves from the ground and remove the old flowers hanging limply in one of those red glass vases.  Other times, people would come in pairs, holding one another around the shoulders and quietly crying.  Men often came and stood with their hands in their pockets.  The most difficult scene I ever witnessed was at the grave of a child who had been killed in a car accident.  On the tombstone, there was etched an image of Christ holding a lamb.  The child’s mother came almost every day, ruined with grief but steadfast in prayer.

I distinctly remember observing these scenes and then seeing the trees that lined the far side of the cemetery blowing in the wind, and I knew that God was there watching, too.  Maybe those are some of my truest, earliest memories of God–the wind in the trees.