Talking With Trees

Recently, my husband and I spent a few days in a treehouse. I’d love to claim it was one of those adventurous and romantic houses you or a sibling or a friend built yourself as a child—one you nailed a few boards across on a couple of sturdy limbs and hammered a side to here and there, then attached some slats to the tree trunk for a makeshift ladder entry. You know that ladder. You scurry up it with a blanket, a pillow, and a few peanut butter sandwiches. You spread the blanket on the floor, lie down with your head on the pillow, and lay the sandwiches aside for later. You stare up through dark branches and waving leaves into a blue sky wedging its way through chinks in the thick green canopy above. Well, that was not our treehouse. And, in all honesty, I’m quite happy it wasn’t. I’ve come to appreciate life’s comforts, like air conditioning, couches, breakfast bars, washers and dryers, a dishwasher, all kinds of indoor plumbing, and a good mattress; all these and more were in the treehouse where we “roughed it.”

Both of my daughters-in-law are serious nature lovers. I use the word serious in conjunction with such words as hiking, camping, rafting, and other such endeavors. As I write, one daughter-in-law is hiking the Appalachian Trail with one of my teenage grandsons and the other finds herself hiking or camping in some Great Northwest forest as often as possible. My idea of camping has long been a weekend in the Holiday Inn ( as they say). You see, I was brought up in the country on a farm/ranch and live on one now. It is a wonderful life in many ways, but to me, roughing it is not a retreat or vacation. I’ve spent enough time trekking through pastures, sweating, and tending livestock. But I do love nature. So, a three-story treehouse with it’s frame and veranda bolted to poles fashioned to look like trees, nestled among groves of majestic trees with canopies of lace and fringe singing in the breeze, somehow fits the bill for me. My husband knows me well. When I start to get the wanderlust, and we can’t yet be away for a long period of time, he is most inventive. He knows that while our daughters-in-law are a bit more rugged souls than I, I am more of a communicant. I like to be still and let the treetops speak.

The Sound Of Trees
by Robert Frost

‘I wonder about the trees.
‘Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by day
Till we lose all measure of pace, 
‘And fixity in our joys,
‘And acquire a listening air.
‘They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And  that talks no less for knowing, 
As grows wiser and older, 
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
‘From the window or the door.
‘I shall set forth for somewhere, 
‘I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
‘I shall have less to say, 
‘But I shall be gone.