Let’s take a moment to appreciate trees.
Try this: On a tree-lined path in the park, close your eyes, walk slowly, and see if you can sense the trees. Big trees, especially, have a near-spiritual presence. If you are lucky enough to avoid getting run over by a bike, you will feel it.
Really, all you will be doing is noticing the small changes in air currents – how the leaves rustle, how the limbs drape the area around the trunk in a little bit of silence. This is all very physical, but if you’re careful you’ll notice that it also feels very much like a soul. No wonder so much of our mythology makes trees walk.
Trees earn most of their public approval in the fall, but I’ve learned to appreciate their skeletal winter seasons, too.
Here’s the trick: Go for a walk before the sun has risen or right after it’s set. Either edge of the day is fine, but the light must be deep blue. You will probably be cold, but if you can catch the branches of trees against the sky, you’ll find the truth: trees are stark, black, infinitely complex. This is what they always are, underneath, but you can only see it in the winter after the soft cover of leaves has fallen away.
Here’s another trick: Remember this in the spring.
I’m sad to report that there are only nine or so deciduous tree species that grow natively in Colorado.
Two of them are cottonwood variants. Most of the others are shrubs, meaning they are less than 30 feet tall. Aspen are a notable exception, but they grow in the mountains, not the suburbs, so like out-of-town friends you don’t see them as often as you’d like. The upshot is that, for the casual Denver tree observer, it tends to feel like cottonwoods are the only real tree in the neighborhood.
I mentioned this once to Alli’s grandfather and he shook his head. “Cottonwoods are trash trees,” he told me with sympathy.
I thought this was an insult at first, but it was only a statement of fact. Female cottonwoods produce several cubic feet of seeds each year, drowning suburban yards in fluff for weeks at a time. Picture a version of snow that feels itchy and never melts, and you’ve got the idea. Trash trees shed this stuff for a few decades, then die.
That’s right: Maples, oaks, and elms can live for hundreds of years, but cottonwoods are lucky to make it to 50. This means that if all goes well, I will outlive every cottonwood I’ve ever met. I felt a brief flash of triumph when I realized this, but now it just makes me sad.
Already I’ve outlived too many trees.
There was a beautiful tree beside the Walkersville library when I was a kid – a big oak, I think, with thick leaves, broad, spreading limbs, and a little bench beneath it. It was the sort of spot where time might slow down. I passed that tree every day walking home from school, and I always imagined sitting down on the little bench to read Redwall. I never actually did.
Now they’ve moved the library and the tree is dead.
But if I close my eyes, I can still see it.
