A Tree

My cousin Jeff and I went to the coast early this morning to shoot the sunrise. Jeff is a photographer; I take pictures. My camera met a tree. This is a cropped close-up from a larger shot I took from the other side of the inlet. I didn’t notice the tree until I got home. But I’m going back to visit it more closely soon.

I love trees. Trees and rocks. After moving to Maine in the fall of 2020, I have grown to love pine trees. Their perfect posture. Their beautiful branches that seem to realize that the bottom branches deserve to have more length than the top ones. As if they know that the longer you have been here, the more space you deserve. And that your history sets the foundation for the history of the branches coming after you.

But this tree, this hundred-year-old tree that sits at the end of a rocky point, slayed me. The house didn’t get rid of it. The wind and rain and snow have weathered it, made it weary perhaps, but it is unbowed.

This tree still stands straight and tall and defies you to think its age is making it less than. It continues to grow, and the fact that the branches are not as perky as they used to be, just like my body parts, doesn’t take away one bit of pride it has in itself and its right to be on that point, viewing all the world around it, without fanfare or fear.

And, it’s beautiful.

If I were an artist, I would draw this tree. Each and every branch and pine needle. I wouldn’t leave out one of them, and I would hang it on my wall, recognizing that the combined parts of its whole—parts that are themselves imperfect—come together to form the perfection.

What a gift to get to view this tree. This amazing tree. And, to feel it’s reflective of me. Today. The sum parts of so many yesterdays.