Becoming the Mother of Trees

Why become the mother of Trees?

1. Well, for one thing, I’ve lost my uterus. I don’t miss her – quite the contrary, in fact – but I do love bringing life to little things. Happily, green ones are quite lovely and not nearly as loud as their human counterparts.
2. Trees are beyond our understanding. They seem so simple but we don’t really truly understand them. We are just beginning to know how they pump their water up or prepare for bug attack – or even more mysteriously, how they communicate with each other through a fungal/root network called the “wood wide web.” My trees keep me humble.
3. Time is different with trees. We are so frantic in our moment-to-moment lives, meanwhile trees stand there and sway and grow a little bit. They seem to exist on an alternative plane, like in a sci-fi novel. While our nerves zip messages in the blink of an eye, their intra-body communication is at a snail’s pace, covering only inches in hours. Meanwhile, bugs live their whole lives while we go on a vacation. Our time is not the only time.
4. It helps. Just a little bit. With our planet in such peril, it’s so nice to make things better – for us, for local animals, for birds and bugs (hopefully nice ones) – even in tiny steps.
5. Each is gorgeous and amazing in different ways. Big and leafy, small and slender, who could choose what’s best? They all do their thing and it’s a better world for it.
6. Trees = hope. Hope for enjoying them in future years, hope for other people enjoying them after I’m gone. As Hamilton says, of course, a legacy is “planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” I truly hope that humanity is in a place to appreciate these trees and all trees – they are my vote of confidence.
7. There is solid sci-fi precedent:

The Expanse, in which people literally go crazy on spaceships from missing trees so much.

The mystical mysterious trippiness of Totoro…

And so here are a few of my saplings, which I just might call on in times of peril and distress…

The sycamore grows….