When I was a child, I had a tree friend. She was a great, grand
willow who grew on the west bank of the Des Plaines River in Libertyville, where I grew up. Someone, I’m not sure who, showed me to her – at that time you had to crawl through the hole in a tall chain-link fence that stood around a playground there near the river, near the golf course, then walk through some tall grass, where there might be snakes, to get to the woods near the river. None of this took very long – from the playground, once I was there, it took maybe three minutes to get to her. It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes to walk to the playground from my house, though often I biked, so it was quicker. I went with my friends to see her at first – we’d sit together in the place where her four great limbs, one of them already fallen, came together. We’d sit astride sometimes, and sometimes we would make a brief motion towards climbing one of her limbs, but mostly this seemed like trouble, compared with just sitting in her crook, talking about whatever came to mind. It was good, there in her crook. It was safe. She was a secret we knew about and shared with one another – the way the sunlight sifted through her branches, which drooped low to the ground and formed a canopy around us, hiding us from any who might pass by, though no one did.

Some of these friends moved away in time, and others of us grew apart a bit over the years, but I returned to visit my willow friend again and again. I was steadfast. I needed her, you see. Especially when my family was fighting, which happened a lot – especially when my parents were fighting – I would flee the house as soon as I could ask permission – and maybe sometimes without asking – and leave its toxic energy behind me. I would travel the four blocks – two long, two short – to the park, drop my bike near the fence, and slip out to her. She was steadfast, too, even more than I was. She was always there for me. Always.

Occasionally there was evidence that others had visited her. I remember the shock of finding some sawn wood planks and plywood in a tree nearby, thinking, oh no! Who would I run into now when I came? But I needn’t have worried. Their fort idea was a passing fancy – whereas my love for Willow was strong, enduring, as she was. I brought a boy there once to kiss – we sat on the cement arch over the water pipe that spilled out under her branches. I liked this boy so much that I shared this sacred place with him, and he was worthy of it, though it turned out kissing didn’t really work for us, as he told me quietly there that he thought he liked boys better than girls, somehow not a surprise to me. She was a safe space for such confessions. She held our confidences.

I visited her less frequently as I grew up, but still, I would visit. Even after my parents moved, while I was in college, when I returned home, I would go and see her. Even after I moved away, even after my parents’ passing, even during my years in Virginia, I would make not quite an annual visit to her. It’s been a few years now – it’s time to go again. Over the years she has changed remarkably. I think I was still in high school when I found I could no longer sit in her crook – a dense spring of suckers there prevented it, foretelling what was to come.  Maybe ten years ago I returned to find she had come apart at the crook, her massive limbs now lying along the ground, the suckers springing up everywhere from her body. She is still, fiercely, growing. She is enjoying what I think of as a very graceful decline. I am not at all alarmed by the state of her – only curious to see her next incarnation.

I am unutterably grateful for her existence. She has been truly one of the great gifts of my life – an accident, a bit of grace, this friend. She has thrived there in the dirty waters of the Des Plaines and had a full life, helping to purify the water, offering habitat and comfort to many creatures, myself among them. She has taught me about myself again and again. As our conversation at church has turned to sanctuary this month, my thoughts are often with her. I especially think about how fortunate I have been to know her – how unusual it might be these days for parents to send their kids even four blocks away unsupervised, how not every child is fortunate to live near greenspace by a river, or greenspace anywhere, how kids in our time might not know to befriend trees. How I might have been an unusual kid, even then. I also think about what I owe her, and how I might pay it back by being a friend to her habitat. As some of us have held a conversation about an imaginative playscape for the southeast church garden, I’ve considered the kid I was, and how I’d like to help other young people access the sort of sanctuary I’ve had in nature my whole life, thanks to my tree friend. Even when I am not with her, she is with me, in me, still showing me glimpses of sunlight through her branches. She restores my soul.

© October 18, 2018