healing tree

When we moved into our home nearly 16 years ago, the yard was quite overgrown. Over the next few months we took out fifteen trees, bushes, and stumps. We put on quite a show for the neighbors with all the action going on, even inspiring a few of them to do a little fix-up. There was a large tree in the back yard, that was mostly dead. Rather than take it out, we decided to build a tree house in/around it. I had wanted a tree house ever since I saw Swiss Family Robinson as a girl. We cut wedges out of the trunk for steps; then designed and built a big tree house six feet off the ground, complete with a three-foot railing around, a slide and trap door, pulley system for hauling things up and down, a knotted rope to climb up to the highest branches, and even a Jolly Roger. It shaded a swing and sand box underneath. It wasn’t as grand as the Robinsons’, but it was mighty grand!

It has been great fun for the children and their friends over the years. Nate even rigged up a movie night for his friends in it one summer evening. And an interesting thing has happened to the tree. It came to life. It sprouted new growth in the branches, and the bark healed over part of the steps cut into the trunk. This tree which we thought was dead is now very much alive. It has continued to grow over the years, even surviving a severe snow storm one October two years ago (it lost one of its two major limbs). We have rebuilt the tree house once, and it is due for another rebuild next spring, to accommodate the growing tree. Watching the change that has taken place in the tree has made me think that what it needed to survive was the energy and vitality of the active children. Their life gave life to the tree; they gave it purpose. I’ve wondered, too, about what the tree has given to my children, and to me. I have named it the “Healing Tree”.

I have named other trees too, about a dozen that I pass every day on my daily walk. There is my “Courage” tree, my “Grace” tree, “Mercy”, “Friendship”, “Faith” , “Hope”, and “Freedom”, among others. My “Giving” tree is a peach tree that drops a fresh peach on the sidewalk for me every morning in late summer and fall, that is, until a good pruning this year cut back the branches that hung over the fence. Being that everything in the universe is connected, that everything is energy, I touch my trees as I pass them, I let my energy flow to the universe through them, I let the energy of the universe come to me as I reach high and brush my hands through their leaves. It is a happy thing to do, a healing thing.