My trees

These are two of my 6 trees. They are tall and impressive from afar. Driving across the bridge onto the island where I live, these two signal home as I draw nearer. They are messy, to be sure, dropping duff into the gutters, obliterating the pathways that the dogs, children and I have carved through the moss over time. They shelter birds and squirrels, hornets nests and insects. And beneath them is a carpet of wild violets and oxalis that bloom pale pink most months of the year. There are areas of creeping dogwood, lily of the valley, sweet woodruff frothing merrily and bolstering baby Douglas fir, hemlock and hawthorn seedlings quietly using this secret place as a nursery. Hellebores and camellias, enkianthus and magnolias, campanulas and daylilies; now self seeded patches reflecting keener gardening days than I have found time for since the girls were little have swallowed up the tiny bulbs we planted with teaspoons long ago. For years, flashes of mahonia blossoms have beckoned us into the shady softness that these giants so kindly bequeath to the undergrowth below. These cedars who sway gracefully, who have grown of an age and girth to swoop arms to the ground and up again into frondy recesses of warm darkness, have held my girls aloft as they chattered about life, tested their bodies and balance and complained of the mother who loves them so. I have watched shafts of pale sunlight filter into these shadows and delighted at the momentary appearance of insects and dust moving into the light and then gone. Eggshell fragments and seeds left by invisible inhabitants give witness to a life beyond what I know.
 
I am ready to reinvent myself elsewhere. This island that has been the scene of my modest triumphs and spectacular failures needs to be history for me now. But not the trees, they need to come and journey with me still sheltering my heart that is pre-mourning their loss. Yet they are beyond teaspoon or trowel, these enormous friends of wood, and must face the future together without me. I sealed their fate with an unthinking signature, so easy then, so hard now.

What is it about trees? What is it about wood and stone that speaks, nay lives inside us? How can I repay what I have received?
I will remember. And love. And smile.