Trees: A Love Story

One morning, as this year’s interminable winter gave way to spring, I took myself out for a walk. Strolling though my favorite park, I was arrested by the sight of a shining silver birch. An exuberant “Hi!” escaped my lips before I could catch it. Looking around, I wondered if anyone had heard me talking to the tree. Not that I could have stopped myself, because trees and I … well, we go way back.

As the daughter and sister of two skilled arborists, I consider trees part of the family. In fact, you could say that they put clothes on my back, a roof over my head, and money in my college fund. Our family photo collections contain just as many pictures of trees as they do of gap-toothed kids, pets, and relatives. Growing up, my brothers and I would groan as Dad repeatedly stopped the car to photograph the specimens he spotted on family road trips.

I’m pretty sure I was the only kid in my class who could identify a Japanese maple and spot Dutch Elm Disease and gypsy moths.

During my tomboy phase, I climbed trees and read books in their branches. Later on, I built a fort in the woods, where I retreated throughout my adolescence, finding comfort and solitude among my beloved trees. I think that’s also where I felt closest to the God of my own understanding.

In college and the years that followed, I traded the solace of nature for the excitement of cities. Years spent living in Philadelphia, London, and New York found me worshipping shiny buildings, hot clubs, trendy restaurants, and manmade thrills. By the time I was 35, that lifestyle had burned me out.

An early midlife crisis sent me running back to the natural world for healing in 1999, when I came to live and recover my spirit at Kripalu amid the green Berkshires. I went for walks in the deep woods and did yoga or took naps under shady trees on the lawn. My fellow Kripalu Volunteer Program participants and I held sharing circles under the majestic American Elm near the Annex, shedding tears and speaking truths beneath its sheltering branches.

Practicing Vrikshasana, or Tree pose, at Kripalu took on special meaning, as I planted my foot, raised my arms, and gazed through the window at steady evergreens for inspiration. “Trees get everything they need without striving, and they’re never in a hurry,” my yoga teacher would say. “Trees are strong because they root down into the earth, reach for the heavens, and bend with the wind.”

And thus trees became my role models, too.

Two years later, I moved to a peaceful suburb of Boston, with tree-lined streets and plenty of parks. I’m now just minutes from Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau famously found tranquility in the woods. When I walk the bike path near my home, the tall pines and maples form a cathedral that receives my prayers and keeps my secrets. The birds and squirrels offer companionship, too, reminding me of Mary Oliver’s promise that life is always calling to me, “announcing (my) place in the family of things.”

I always feel benevolently companioned by trees, and I’m proud to call myself a tree hugger. I’ve also been known to thank them and caress their bark—in private, of course.

“It’s no coincidence that the most important spiritual leaders went out to nature when they were searching for the truth,” says Positive Psychology teacher and author Tal Ben-Shahar. Indeed, the Buddha himself found enlightenment under a sacred fig tree that later became known as the Bodhi tree. It makes me wonder if this great spiritual teacher was absorbing wisdom from an even greater teacher during those weeks of sitting in stillness under its leaves.

I once heard on the news that humans are spending more time with machines than we are with each other, which makes me guess that time in nature has probably dropped even farther down the list. While I love my gadgets, they rarely stir my heart like the smell of spruce or musky autumn leaves, the fiery blaze of fall color, or the tender green shoots and pastel blossoms of spring.

Recently, I was excited to learn about a meditation practice called “sit spot.” It involves finding a tranquil place in nature to simply sit and observe natural rhythms and changes, for about 15 minutes a day. Now that’s my kind of spiritual practice, and I know I’m in good company.

“I go among trees and sit still,” the poet Wendell Berry wrote. “All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle.”

May all beings find their own Bodhi tree.

Kim Childs is a Boston-based life and career coach and writer who specializes in Positive Psychology. She is also a Kripalu Yoga teacher and facilitator of workshops based on The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron.

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