Me commune with a CT tree? Here's how it went.

Originally published in the Hartford Courant.

As a younger woman, I imagined I’d get married in my bare feet. This urge was born of my teenage “hippie” days, which were on the mild side, but genuine. I bought corduroys from the thrift store and wore a hemp necklace with a green stone. I was into the Dead – but the studio albums only.

By my late twenties, which is when I did get married (shoed, in a church) these tendencies had all but disappeared. The hemp was long gone. The Dead albums stored.

It was notable, then, to find myself barefoot in a forest during a recent excursion with my 13-year-old son, Gabe. We met friends at “The Cattail Gathering,” an annual nature skills workshop held at a park in Litchfield, about an hour from our home.

The first thing I realized as I pulled into the parking lot was that the entreaty I’d made enroute, for Gabe to “please run a brush” through his wild curls, was rendered foolish at best here at the Gathering. Participants embraced their wild curls. They had homemade sandals. A few capes.

These are Gabe’s people, I thought. But in the minivan reality of my current life (mom-of- three, communications professional and busy contemplator of things like: which couch should we buy for our living room?) were they mine? I felt summoned by my younger self, and eager to find out.

While my son headed to a workshop on cooking wild edible plants, I joined a friend for an introduction to forest bathing. Some serious downtime in the woods sounded just right. Life had become so needlessly frantic, and, lately, I’d found myself resenting the busy-ness more than usual. Playdates structured around Zoom meetings in between grocery runs. I felt like I was getting lost in life’s least significant details.

Our trustworthy guide led us through several specific exercises. This surprised me, as I thought the “bathing” would be more, I don’t know? Sitting around? Not the case, and the thoughtful activities and sun-dappled forest ground effortlessly drew me into a “flow state” faster than any productivity hacks I’ve tried in my harried days at home. We meditated on a rock, did an anxiety-reducing breathing exercise and — most macabre, yet somehow delightful — laid down on the leaves and contemplated our own death. Ashes to ashes.

But my favorite exercise was talking to a tree.

I shrugged off any insecurities I had about this proposal, aided by choosing a tree a decent way from the other participants. If I was going to get into a conversation with an evergreen, I needed privacy.

My tree was well-established yet not too wide, and I wound my arms round its trunk. Immediate tree hugging, who would have guessed? Looking up, chin against the rough bark, I breathed in the pattern of branches slicing the light at random angles, cobwebs glittering in their crooks.

I uttered a whispered hello and then, out of nowhere, came the rushed admission that I was sorry. For climate change, I guess? Sort of a heavy way to begin a conversation, but it is what it is.

Next, a question came to mind. Too big for most getting-to-know-yous, yet fitting for this one.

What should I do?

I listened.

He was quiet at first (I don’t want to overcomplicate things, but this tree was a “he”; now, the muskrat weed I wrote a poem for later in the afternoon during “Not Your Average Plant Walk”? She was a girl).

Then came the answer.

Be still.

(I’m not crazy, I mean, sure, it likely came from myself. But whatever the case, it came.)

Still. As in, the opposite of what I’m like these days. Be still. Delivered barefoot in a forest, like the adult I hadn’t exactly become. How easy, this morning’s transition. From the person I am to the one I always thought I’d be. Perhaps, I surmised, the distance wasn’t really that far.

My time in the woods was a solid reminder of two things, which I carried with me when Gabe and I departed, and have recalled as needed in the days since. First, that girl with the hemp necklace is still around, and likely just needed some prodding. The adult version is forest bathing.

And: an easily accessible antidote to the modern-day frenzy is available right in our own backyards and city parks. Interfacing with a tree is surprisingly accessible and effective, if you carve out a little time (and some distance from curious neighbors).

We returned to our circle. I sat on the uneven ground, dug my toes into the fallen leaves and took another look at my tree, with a silent note of thanks.

Could I find him again, I wondered, if I returned to this very spot? The forest is vast and I’m no nature expert. But my tree and I had truly connected, on whatever level it is that trees and humans do.

And uncovering lost things just takes a little patience. Yes, I think that I could.

During an annual Maine getaway, time stands still

Originally published in the Boothbay Register

Children have this quality, less evident to their parents than to those who don’t see them as often, of growing at breakneck speed, eliciting a slew of predictable, yet nonetheless charming, comments (“he looks like a totally different person!” or the rhetorical, “where has the time gone?”).

As a younger mom, I didn’t connect with this sentiment as readily as I do these days. My children were adorable, yes, but needy, and exhausting. Comments about their growth felt misplaced. “Bigger,” I’d think? “They still seem  very  little.” They still, I’d say to myself, cannot go to the bathroom on their own. 

Now, with our two teenagers and their nearly ten-year-old little sister, rapidly gaining on them – now  I see it. The ability to witness time’s exponential shifts – its mind-bending ways – has landed like a gift, earned, perhaps, by those early, endless, days. 

Finally, I get that it’s all a phase, that the toys won’t (and didn’t) fill the house forever. Finally, I’m not in a rush to move on. I watch my 15-year-old daughter, poised, reading quietly on a beach towel, and think, “Wait, where  did  it go, though? The time?”

We’ve just returned to Connecticut from our too-many-years-going-to-count, multi-week stint on Southport. I thought about this a lot during our time there. Because if there’s one thing that crystalizes the distance between the dizzying moments that make up our lives – the moments that make up a childhood – it’s a familiar spot, well-loved, and visited regularly. 

It’s nearly impossible to see these changes in the day to day of “what are we going to have for dinner?” and getting to piano lessons, in the same way that you can’t sit there and watch a plant grow.  But Maine, for me, is the well-worn backdrop that brings these observations into sharp focus, as my children jump from rock to rock along the shore, or peer at the lobsters at Robinson’s, in the same way as when they were little, just the same – and yet – wasn’t this gangly 13-year-old, not so long ago, much shorter than me?  

Pulling up to my mother’s house, where we disembark for a few weeks from late July through mid-August, seems to put the calendar year on hold as my husband, my children, and I greet summer friends and annual visitors; as we all catch up about the year gone by. We often move in multi-generational packs: my mom and her friends, their kids who are my friends, and  their  kids’, who are friends with my children.

“Look how big they’ve gotten,  look at them,” the grandparents say, all caught up in nostalgia and disbelief. There it is, though, irrefutably illuminated by these yearly midsummer happenings: everyone once again wrapped in striped towels by the pool, ravenously assessing this year’s book and toy displays at Sherman’s, and leaping, manic, off the dock. 

Regular life, it doesn’t always let me see my children clearly enough, except in those notable, somewhat rare, instances (that last walk home from fourth grade, or the middle school band concert -- you know the ones). Perhaps that’s a good thing, because regular life necessitates regular action, like getting to school on time, best not interrupted by extended philosophical pondering. 

But against the backdrop of this mid-coast landscape – one I’ve known since I, too, was a child - my kids are, unquestionably, different, juxtaposed against a kaleidoscope of memories. Doing the same things in the same places as all those years prior. And yet… 

There’s my son on the rocks building structures out of driftwood, and my youngest daughter eating melting peppermint ice cream by the footbridge. There’s my oldest sitting serenely at my mom’s wooden dining room table, where one summer as a three-year-old, she sang, “Puff the Magic Dragon” with the shameless confidence bestowed by toddlerhood alone. Then, and now, and then again. 

On our annual trips to Southport, time does that trick – back bending, ricocheting – then staying still. Allowing me to see my children from the vantage point of an outsider on these unhurried Maine days, and the hours – so prolonged they almost seem stolen – to wonder at it all.