It’s finally feeling like fall in central North Carolina. The temperatures are going to dip down to the upper 40s tonight. I love jacket weather and feel energized by a chill in the air–compared to the lingering heat and humidity that has been so oppressive. In a few weeks, I’ll be heading to the mountains to see friends and to witness the colorful canvas of trees dressed in their fall finest, with leaves of golds, reds, and oranges.

I love trees in every season, and have since I was a girl. We lived on the land that my Great Grandmother purchased in 1860. The two-story house I grew up in was built in 1880 so the large trees in our yard–black walnut, oak, pecan–were well-established. We gathered the walnuts and pecans for Daddy to crack open, then painstakingly pick out on Saturday nights while he watched Gunsmoke. Those trees provided great shade to our non-air conditioned house and their roots served as kickball bases.

The tree on our farm that was my favorite was the chinaberry. We made a treehouse in it because the trunk and lower limb were so wide that even our collie-mix dog, Ruff, could follow us up into our hideout. Daddy pulled an old wagon underneath the chinaberry so we could climb down into it where we set up a play kitchen. Off the main lower limb of the tree another branch went up and we could sit on that perch and see across the field to the neighbor’s house. Sometimes their kids would join us.

My older sister, Harriet got the grand idea that we should make a swimming pool. We’d dig it just out from the tree so we could tie a rope to a branch, swing from the tree and drop into the pool. We dug and dug to make a hole and then filled it with buckets of water. But the next day we discovered that the water was gone, absorbed into the ground. Then Harriet, or one of the neighbor kids, decided we should line the hole with plastic. We found plastic in the barn and stretched it over the hole then filled it again with water. That afternoon we took turns swinging from that rope and splashing into our hand-dug pool. The next morning, the water remained.

When I grew older and left home for college, the chinaberry had to be cut down after it was hit by lightening. One of my biggest regrets is that we didn’t have any photos of that favorite spot of our childhood. Back then we didn’t have the convenience of cell phone cameras and fewer things were captured on film with Mama’s Kodak Brownie Box Camera. While I moved away and never had a place like my childhood home, I always carried a love for trees. They were like senior family members who represented shelter and security.

Years later, I realized the deep grounding of trees when I read a novel. I can’t remember the name of that book but it was about a young mountain woman. When she married a man who lived across the mountain range, she was distraught at having to leave her family and home. She’d never traveled and didn’t know when she would return. On that wagon with her few items of clothing, pieces of furniture and a cedar hope chest, she took a tree her father dug up for her from their yard. The tree was a way of taking her family, and the home she’d always known, with her. In times when she was upset in the early years of marriage, without her mother or father to run to, she’d go to the tree for solace, for grounding.

That was all I remembered from that book ten years later, after my beloved Golden Retriever, Madison, had to be put down. I found myself drawn to the crepe myrtle tree in my front yard. It was in July and the tree was filled with pink buds and provided the only shade. Madison often loved to roll in the grass near there and I could feel her presence while I stood beneath the canopy of shade. I identified with the woman in the novel and how she found comfort beneath the tree that she’d carried across the mountains.

Trees are living things created for all kinds of purposes: their leaves provide oxygen for us to breathe, they bear nuts and fruits, provide shade, yield lumber, and support a frame for houses that children create to spend hours in play. They also fill in like family in roles of shelter and security.

For me, they’re a thing of beauty and keep me rooted in the things that are most important. I photographed this tree when I was briefly “lost” while walking the Camino. That forest was magical and I didn’t regret temporarily losing my way. Those branches, like arms stretching heavenward in prayer, reminded me that I was safe and would eventually find my way back to the trail. In the meantime, I breathed in deeply the oxygen-rich air and experienced the gift of having the forest all to myself.

My wish for you is that you have a sheltering tree that comforts you and makes you feel grounded when you lose your way.

Best to you,

Connie