Confessions of a Certified (and Certifiable) Tree Hugger
OK, since I have been accused, I will go ahead and confess. Yes, I hug trees.
The biggest loblolly pine on earth
Though people are often referred to as tree huggers this moniker is not usually meant literally. It just means that the person cares about the environment or maybe wears sandals and eats granola. I do like granola and I do care about the environment, though I rarely wear sandals.
Applied to me tree hugger has a quite literal meaning. I love to hug trees. Especially big trees, old trees, trees with character and history. Maybe that’s one reason I like Tolkien so much, for he so deeply loved trees too (For a wonderful essay about Tolkien and trees click here).
Now wouldn't you love to curl up in the nook of a "limb" on Treebeard (who wasn't himself a tree but was a tender and tree-like guardian of trees) and take a nap, or hear a tale of Fanghorn, or listen closely along with Treebeard to the deepness of the forest? I like to sit against trees, especially in the nooks between roots of really big ones, like Frodo did in Tom Bombadli's forest. Thankfully the trees I sit against are nicer than Tom Bombadli's trees and don't try to swallow me. And if I sit very very still against a tree in the forest, soon the animals forget about me and go about their business and often come very close. I've seen lots of deer this way.
Applied to me tree hugger has a quite literal meaning. I love to hug trees. Especially big trees, old trees, trees with character and history. Maybe that’s one reason I like Tolkien so much, for he so deeply loved trees too (For a wonderful essay about Tolkien and trees click here).
Now wouldn't you love to curl up in the nook of a "limb" on Treebeard (who wasn't himself a tree but was a tender and tree-like guardian of trees) and take a nap, or hear a tale of Fanghorn, or listen closely along with Treebeard to the deepness of the forest? I like to sit against trees, especially in the nooks between roots of really big ones, like Frodo did in Tom Bombadli's forest. Thankfully the trees I sit against are nicer than Tom Bombadli's trees and don't try to swallow me. And if I sit very very still against a tree in the forest, soon the animals forget about me and go about their business and often come very close. I've seen lots of deer this way.
So yes, sometimes I’ll wrap my arms around a tree to get a feel for how big and old it is. As far as I know a tree has no neurons or anything like them, though recent research has confirmed that some plants do transmit a a kind of electrical impulse. Trees also have hormones, and hormones allow one part of a tree to communicate with another, and one tree with another. And plant cells have the ability to "store" information, though we cannot say, sadly that they have memories as we think of memories. But they just SEEM to have memories don’t they?
Trees, especially old trees, seem to have unique personalities. Even old trees of the same species are quite different from each other, and they each seem to have a unique story to tell if they could but talk. Trees point us back to the mystery of history, to stories we want to understand yet which seem just out of our grasp, to that mystery which is the past. This tree has a story I think.
Trees, especially old trees, seem to have unique personalities. Even old trees of the same species are quite different from each other, and they each seem to have a unique story to tell if they could but talk. Trees point us back to the mystery of history, to stories we want to understand yet which seem just out of our grasp, to that mystery which is the past. This tree has a story I think.
Trees that disappear into the heights seem also to want to tell a different story, not just of the past. They seem to point us to a very current and living mystery to which our hearts desperately want to connect. In a literal way they reach up, pointing to the sky, to the heavens above. They get lost, shrouded in mystery, and we want to follow them into that mystery, for somehow it seems our own stories are made complete there. These old trees, shrouded in mist and mystery, seem to point us to something real, something more real than other things we see clearly - perhaps SomeONE real. I rather think so.
