Can You Fall in Love With a Tree…?

Trees aren’t people, but they have a life force. Maybe, just maybe, I once fell in love with a Beech…

Exercise and communing with nature are important aspects of procuring a maintaining a life balance. They are extremely good for your mental health. They give you focus and a sense of purpose and, to an extent, alleviate loneliness and also give you a sense of self-worth. To that end, I will recount a love affair I had with a tree, and communed with it every time I passed it when out jogging.

I won’t hesitate to tell you, every time I communed with that tree my cares fled, and I came away feeling a million Dollars.

I recently read with interest an article by Alex Rosado where the author described wishing they were an oak tree.

This put me in mind of a time in Ireland twenty years ago when I was training hard for the London marathon.

I would do incessant hill sprints until I was exhausted, and then I would wind down under the cover of a beautiful old Beech tree. After my wind-down stretches, I would sit underneath my Beech and contemplate her branches.

She seemed to reach out to me, her boughs leaning in towards me, and her twigs reaching down to caress my fingertips.

She even had a face, in the form of a gnarled trunk with two eyes and a gash of a mouth where probably she had once had an infection or infestation.

Day in, and day out, I would sit underneath my Beech and gaze up at her face, which would smile back at me.

As this happened, I could feel her life force coursing through her trunk.

I would place my hand on her bark and sigh deeply as I communed with her.

Then I would wrap my arms around her and hug her deeply, almost wishing I could be another tree in a copse beside her, our roots intertwining through the fungal corridors beneath the damp earth.

It was nonsense of course, but in a way, I was in love. Of course, she wasn't my beech; She was a subject of nature, and as such had only been loaned to me for a time by the Universe.

I remember the last time I sat beneath my Beech.

The sun played on her broad bright fresh green leaves, most as least as broad as the palm of my hand. The bright light dappled on her trunk playing silver shimmers along her bark.

I hugged her tight and set off for London.

The next time I returned I was shocked to see that my Beech had been felled: her carcass was trussed up in woodpiles as her evenly sawn logs were piled high waiting for the park authorities to sell her for timber or firewood.

I don’t mind telling you, I cried.

Yes, I have never been in love with a tree before or since, but I loved that Beech.

It was only then, when I gazed in horror at the dead, slaughtered remnants of my arboreal romance, that I realized my big mistake:

I had never given her a name.