My Tree Brother

You might think I’m writing this on acid.

Yeah, well, I’m not.

It’s a sober, heart-felt tribute to the tree — my brother.

Just like me, they live and grow and die.

I say “brother,” but it’s not meant to be gender-focused. Most tree species reproduce asexually through their seeds, but others can reproduce "sexually" through the exchange of male and female pollen.

One interesting thing I learned researching this blog: Trees can be male, female -- or both.

Just like people.

As with people, there are many, many kinds of trees. Oaks, maples, pines, aspens, willows, locusts, poplars, elms, fruit trees, palm trees (depends on where you live), etc., etc. So many beautiful varieties to enhance our lives.

They’ve been with us since the dawn of time, though mostly just as often-ignored background figures standing noble and tall above our silly world.

I have a request: Take a drive and instead of looking at the buildings and the fast-food signs and the people and the traffic (well, actually DO keep watching the traffic) -- look at the trees lining the road and standing amid the homes you pass by.

Then drive on out to the countryside, where trees can be seen lining rivers and creeks and fields. Or up into the mountains, where vast forests of pines of every kind bring an eternal green to the landscape.

Then there’s Fall, when the deciduous varieties’ leaves change into so many spectacular colors.

They can take our breath away.

And let’s not forget the sweet, cool refuge a big leafy tree can provide on a hot Summer day.

When I was a kid, I yearned for a treehouse, but we had no suitable tree that could support one.

Kind of sad.

But when I became a Dad, me and a friend finally made good on the treehouse idea — for my kids.

And may we always remember the vital role trees play in producing oxygen. You know: That air we breathe to stay alive.

Thank you, trees.

Or the role they play in providing wood to build our houses and warm us against the Winter chill.

Or how trees provide home and sanctuary for so many creatures, like birds and squirrels and raccoons and possums and monkeys and many others.

Down in Brazil, in the Amazon Rainforest, trees are being continuously cut down to make way for houses and cattle grazing. Yes, people need places to live and food to eat. But they also need the oxygen provided by those trees.

We humans tend to take trees for granted. They’ve always been in the background of our lives and we assume they always will be.

But will they?

I hope so. But I think we humans need to think a bit more about how trees enhance our lives — and what a different world it would be without them.

I close with this poem by Joyce Kilmer:

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest (pressed)

Against the Earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

So true.