Tree Hugger? That's me....

What is a tree hugger?

I am. That’s the short answer.

Of course, in this complicated world “tree hugger” is often uttered with contempt. This beautiful, positive concept has evolved into a derogatory term slung at people concerned about the future of the earth.

For me it’s ancestral. I grew up around trees. In my childhood I climbed the swaying willow in our side yard, opened my book, and sat for hours, reading and swinging lightly in the breeze. On warm summer evenings my family and I played kick the can, hide and seek, and croquet beneath the sheltering branches of huge bur oaks.

During a recent visit to my family farm I slept in a tent under the shade of those same bur oaks. They were guardians of my sleep; their rustling leaves soothed and comforted me. The previous property owners, my grandparents and parents, are gone but the trees remain. They are, in modern eco-friendly terms, storehouses of carbon and producers of oxygen but they also contain something less measurable … a connection to the generations of family who lived—and continue to live—there. Their deep roots held us to the land. Their knarled branches and glossy leaves sheltered us from the sun.

I currently reside in the middle of a forest and I spend my days—and nights—in the midst of these lovely friends. Trees comfort me, shelter me, and sing to me. They give me stability and roots, protection and peace. I live under the forest canopy … and just like the deer, bear, fox, coyotes, wolves, and song birds who live under this canopy with me, the trees are my home.

What would it be like to believe—and act as if—trees had feelings just as we do? I recently uncovered an article I’d clipped in 1984. It was written by novelist/poet/essayist Alice Walker (“When a Tree Falls…”). Walker wrote that she and a friend visited a national forest to listen to what the Earth was saying. Soon after entering the woods Walker lay down on the path under a grove of trees. As she rested on their roots she felt the trees’ anger. They wanted her to move. Walker began to converse with the trees:

"All my life you have meant a lot to me. I love your grace, your dignity, your serenity, your generosity…. Well, said the trees, before I finished this list, we find you without grace, without dignity, without serenity, and there is no generosity in you either—just ask any tree. You butcher us, you burn us, you grow us only to destroy us. Even when we grow ourselves you kill us, or cut off our limbs. That we are alive and have feelings means nothing to you."

A deep sadness fills my body when I see a logging truck stacked with the thick, dead bodies of fresh-cut trees driving down the highway. Can we human beings change our attitudes toward trees—toward all of nature—in order to consider, as the first inhabitants of this land did, that all living things are our relatives?

A friend said today, “One of the reasons I live in northern Wisconsin is because of the trees. The trees are my family.”

I hug my family members. Do you?

(Thanks for the question, Winky.)