The immediate neighborhood serves as a satisfactory landscape on weekdays for morning and evening walks with the dog, but on the weekend, the forest calls. As soon as I step onto a curved path winding through the trees, my lungs begin to tingle; I gulp the air laced with the perfume of soil and wood and leaves in various stages of birth, life, and decay. I can’t get enough of it! Even bare branches teem with life.
I’m one of those people who struggle to keep up with the business of being human. It is almost more than I can handle. As much as I love being around people, my anxiety——the selfish uninvited diva!——steals the spotlight leading up to any social occasion. It practically melts my brain to deal with the long list of details I worry about. Human-ness asks so much of me, and I never quite feel that I have enough to give it. I don’t wish this on anyone, but at the same time, I hope I’m not the only one who feels this way. Do others feel paralyzed by decisions, or experience the same drop of the stomach when the phone rings? What does the world want from me now I ask myself, that I won’t be able to give?
This is why the trees calm me. The trees are solid and stalwart, and they don’t ask anything of me. In fact, they appear confident that it is I who need them. I lean against a tree and appreciate the way bark becomes deeper with age, etched with lines and scars that hint at past traumas. At the same time I am suffering under the strain of making banal wardrobe choices or considering an inconsequential RSVP, the trees are expected to withstand real situations like rain, wind, lightning, and ice. They do it, too. They survive and exist together. Below my feet, their roots are entwined. Overhead, I see injured or broken branches propped up by the dependable trunk of the neighboring tree.
Monday through Friday, I’m an anxious human taking only shallow sips of air. My middle school days are well behind me, but you wouldn’t know it, the way I still worry about fitting in. I replay conversations in my mind, regretting things I said, mentally re-writing the script until I arrive at something better. I second-guess myself, and worry how others see me. I feel awkward in my own body. My brain won’t let me accept the things I can’t control.
But then…I head to the forest! The forest is always dressed to the nines for each season, draped in the perfect color palette and spritzed with heady perfumes. My human concerns jostling about in my brain finally quiet down. I barely remember what they were! Instead, electric blue sky, brisk air, and the toasty rays of the sun flood my senses. It’s as though the atoms I’m made of begin humming and rattling, before crashing into complete chaos, then quickly reordering themselves into neat and orderly rows as straight as soldiers.
My worries are small. My concerns disappear underfoot as I converse with the trees. I want to call them my trees, but I know I can’t claim them. Instead, they claim me. I will breathe them in, sing to them, dance between their roots. In the woods, I’m happy. I look into the face of the beautiful human beside me, the one who sips air all week, too. Now our breath fills us up, and we feel lighter as all the confusion and dismay evaporates. The trees catch our burdens and tuck them safely in the deep ridges of their bark.
Being human is a dangerous plight, and I’m glad I don’t have to face it alone. I hold the hand of my beloved human, and we breathe in life-giving energy, recharging our batteries. The trees will sustain us for now, until we return next week.
