When I was young, I used to collect fragments of trees—crepe myrtle, pinecone, flake of birch—and stow them away in a cardboard box. One summer morning, I was sentenced to “room time.” It was a godawful punishment to be locked in that drowsy bedroom. I was itching to make a break for the bushes and not look back. Instead, I pulled the box from underneath my bunk bed.
My thumb brushed against a wilting poppy. I pressed the sungold petal to my cheek. The touch of its velvety skin against mine was effused with a creamy fragrance, with base notes of rotting needles and bark; this transported me to a past afternoon, when I sat back to back against a ponderosa pine.
I listened to the swish of foliage above me—spruce against swaying dogwood. A sycamore seed caught my eye as it twirled in pirouettes towards the mossy floor. I snatched it from its path and tucked it into my pocket. I’ll add this to my collection later. Then something pierced my toe: a sweetgum’s prickly orb, left conspicuously in the center of my path.
I followed these tokens of trees until I saw it—a blink of amber in the mosaic of green. I climbed through webs and briars until it loomed above, bathing me in champagne light. Yes, a beech. I pulled out my knife and etched my name into its milky flesh. It was our little secret, this meeting in the woods. I didn’t want either of us to forget.
***
Every August, we set aside a day to plant trees. I raced my cousins to the barn, and scrambled for my favorite shovel or hoe. We spent hours bent over the searing earth: scoop and toss, scoop and toss. I could feel the throb of blisters through my gloves. A few hours in and my bare feet were stained the red of Carolina clay. I envied my boy cousins, who could peel the T-shirts from their dripping backs and toss them aside. After the seedlings were dropped into place, we stomped the extra clay around them. Then we wait.
There is one tree I always return to. After Frosty died in a thunderstorm, I watched Dad haul her limp body into the back of the truck. We drove in silence to the edge of the pasture, where she used to graze on wild oat grass. He gently laid her into the earth and piled on fresh soil. I watched, motionless. He disappeared for a moment, returning with a tiny oak sapling. I placed it gently into the hollow Dad had left in the mound, and pressed soft loam around it. When we drive past it, my dad and I silently acknowledge that moment. My siblings take no notice. To them, it is just another tree.
