Sentimental Trees

Post 6

Saturday, March 9, 2013
2:34 pm


I've been preoccupied with downed trees. They've caught my eye this past week, as I'm driving or being driven. I've noticed them on this property, I've noticed them on other's. Maybe it's because I know that spring will soon cover most of these patches of forest with green boughs and they won't be as noticeable. If you think about it, how often do we notice a cracked trunk or the splintered branch? I have always focused on the limbs that are reaching upward and guiltily, I notice the leaves more often than the leaf-holders. Once I noticed one fallen tree this week, I started to keep my eye out for others which is perhaps easier after the affects of Sandy and other storms. We didn't have as much damage, but it's possible I just didn't notice what had fallen, so concerned by what had not.

I originally thought this blog should be more impersonal. Why, I'm not sure. Maybe because my association with my place is so personal, that to let the tone be too close is to risk the apathy of something I hold dear. This is the dialogue I have whenever I write and poetry tends to be the most impersonal while seeming intimate. I'm growing out of this as I become more sure of myself. Rejection of my subject by others is not as debilitating as it once was; I know it's not personal, it's just a call for improvement. So now I feel like I need to let this blog be a bit more personal, at least for this entry.

Last week, at the spot where I'm now sitting, my boyfriend asked me to marry him. I knew it was coming; since I work as a wedding photographer with my sister, we have weekends booked from now until next summer so the date was planned well before the ring appeared. I knew I wanted to be asked here, somewhere at my mom's house, somewhere on this wonderful property that has been home for most of my life. On Sunday, he brought me to this place and reminded me that some time ago, we had been clearing some trees, knocking down dead and nearly dead saplings to let the others grow stronger and make a wider path for my mother and her horses. He had stopped when a small speck of bark found its way into the corner of his eye. Still just friends, I had stood close enough to breathe in his skin and softly look for it in his lashes. Just before sunset last week, he brought me again to that spot. "Do you remember that day? Do you remember that as the time when things between us started to change?" 

Sitting now in the midst of these orange and tan pine needles on the path where he knelt down, I think of the class discussion on anthropomorphism and that the practice of associating human characteristics with nature is frowned upon, a no-no. I wonder if the scientific community would also look down on attaching sentimental value to place, to recalling a moment most vividly in the context of what color the leaves were and was the wind cold or stilled. I am not sure I could ever refrain from giving a fall day or a swim in the ocean something more than just photosynthesis and tidal movement. When I put my hand down and pick up a maple leaf, or put my hand on a slim branch that could very well be on the ground because two friends went outside on a bright autumn afternoon to clear a path of trees, I know I'll want to say more about what the moment meant than how it scientifically came to be.