Entry Eight: Thursday April 16, 2015 6:00 pm

I pause before entering my tree. Partly because I know that this is the official conclusion - that this may be the last time I step foot inside my tree and feel its boughs embrace me. And partly because of the bright red pellets littering the ground. I crouch down and retrieve a handful. The soppy bundle resembles cranberry relish at Thanksgiving, except it doesn’t stain my fingers crimson when I grind it up in my palm. Each pod peels away in layers, almost like the bud of a not-quite-ready flower. I glance directly above me, and realize that these red pellets just a week or so ago were starbursts cocooning fetal leaves. I thank them for their service, dust off my palms on my sweat pants, and creak to my feet.

Despite the soaked and slippery bark, I mount my tree easily. Right foot, left foot, swing over stump. I nestle into this place, ten to twelve feet high. My chest swells with pride when I think back to the instant when I was frozen with fear at the thought of spending my twenty minutes at such a height. Now I sit a queen on my tree-throne. I throw a hand around the supporting trunk and nuzzle it. I breathe in deeply. Scents of moist, just-turned earth fill my nose. They come from the neighbor’s, where they have uprooted every. single. plant. surrounding their house. I know the next time I smell this scent, it will be because we are growing new life rather than destroying it.

The tree and I withdraw from our embrace. Now I examine the newly sprouted, naked leaves. They droop towards the ground almost like a willow. I imagine each as a sopping creature, like a cat caught in the rain. The gray of the post-storm sky mutes the green color so it is almost indistinguishable from branches. The trees surrounding our property boast clusters of leaves like neon broccoli. Despite the unnatural appearance, I find myself wishing my tree’s leaves were more like theirs. I know they will be. It’s just that I can’t help but wish this awkward, teenage-like phase of my tree’s existence would hurry itself along so I can enjoy its shade and somewhat restored magnificence.

The steep pitch of the stump has finally beaten me, and I decide to dismount. Just as I turn myself around and begin to lower myself from my perch, my phone shrieks its deafening ringtone. My heart skips. My grip slips. I slide.

Within the first millisecond, the tree clings to my shirt, ripping it upwards and exposing my abdomen and chest. The fresh skin beneath from three inches below my right breast to three inches above grates against the bark. In the crux of the tree, my foot catches and twists before sending me tumbling backwards in an avalanche of river rock.

I blink. I am on my feet still standing on the concrete driveway. I don’t know how I am not in a heap on the ground. I also don’t know how my cell phone ended up in my hand. It is still screaming. I answer.

“Hey, can you move your car out of the driveway?” It is Nikki.

I turn back up the empty drive. “It isn’t in the driveway.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Click.

I stare from the phone screen back to the tree. I feel betrayed that my tree would not catch me. I feel idiotic that I could not catch myself. I feel pain radiating from the raw skin on my chest and the over-extended muscle in my ankle.

How did that happen? How could this happen during my last time in my tree?

I twirl my ankle gingerly, and cup my hand around my breast. I stare up at the height I’ve fallen and think of the other possible outcomes. I couldn’t been stranded in the tree for hours. I could’ve broken my foot on the tumble down. I could have fallen directly back and impaled myself on the fence. Whatever greater being wants me still around and wanted to teach me something during my last time in the tree.

Sometimes, I realize, “last times” aren’t what you expect. They aren’t beautiful sun sets and fully unfolded leaves. Sometimes they are gray skies, wounded pride and wounded parts. I decide it’s fitting that this would happen for my last week of the nature writing blog. We are all humans. We are part of nature yet outside it. Because we are lovers of nature or because we have spent enough time in nature to feel possessive over it, none of us is invincible. Kole wasn’t, Annie wasn’t, Wesley wasn’t. I’m not. And that vulnerability and fragility means pain, but it also means rarity and uniqueness. Life and nature are things that I’ve come to appreciate. Through the pain and heartache, I know there is a place that I can go to nurse wounds of all kinds: my tree.

Entry Seven: Tuesday March 31, 2015 6:00 pm

The wind ushers clouds across the sky at dizzying speeds. In only seconds, the dark grey forms have moved into frame from the right, across my line of vision, and beyond the peripheral sight of my left eye. Because the thunder clouds are only a shade darker than the sky that envelopes them, I have to focus very carefully to track their movement. The pages of my notebook fwop-fwop-fwop under the wind’s power. I slide my pen into the spiral binding and pocket the tiny pad to silence its unruly pages.

Still the wind demands to be noticed. It charges my face, forcing my nose to run and eyes to water. It drives the grass dry split ends of my hair to snap against the tree. My hands numb in that winter-familiar way that make jotting down notes painful. The wind brings with it, too, the scent of mountain fresh dryer sheets. I wrinkle my nose and will the unnatural smell away.

The wind bullies my tree as well, swirling its branches into a tornado. Red starburst bursts like scarlet chestnuts peppering the remaining branches of my tree are tossed about. I scan the trees surrounding my property and find that no others show signs of growth. My heart swells. I can’t help but wonder if the premature growth is at least in part from me pouring all of my energy into this tree. My prayers for regeneration have not been answered, but a consolation is served in the form of these tiny spiked bulbs. I find myself wishing that one would fall so I could examine it more closely. Despite the gusts and gales the starbursts cling to their branches. I decide this is best for they promise new life.

I watch them flap in the wind: branches reaching left, then right, and finally swirling in a circle. The movement is in like an inhale. I watch the bronchial tubes flex as they fill with air from the breeze. Suddenly I realize that more than a lung, this branch instead looks like a heart: the thick bough: an artery; the branches: capillaries.

I position myself so that I am sitting more on the small of my back than my behind and wedge my knee up against this bough. This way I can arch to watch my tree’s heart pump without my neck aching. Red with the blood of new life, enriched with the oxygen of the earth, my tree’s heart beats again. Just like Kole’s heart beats again; his heart valve salvaged six months ago was recently transplanted to an eleven-month-old girl.

A particularly strong gust of wind grabs hold of my tree. Against my knee, I feel the trunk flex almost imperceptibly away from me and back again. The movement must have been less than an inch. Feeling the solidity of a tree trunk move is like feeling the first movements of a baby through her mother’s stomach: foreign, almost alien; disturbing, yet the most natural gesture possible. I feel my pulse and breathing quicken and I shoot into an upright position. I’m dizzy but cannot stop the smile from blooming on my lips. I lean into the bough, embrace my tree, and wait for the next breath of life.