Time to Hug a Tree

For the last two weeks in February, I was in the sunny Florida Keys. This has become a nearly annual trip for me - and I stayed with my parents in a small resort. Not far from my bedroom window, was a smallish palm tree standing alone against the edge of the resort driveway - but somehow, I don't think it minded being where it was.

My mother asked me each evening if I had watched the sunset - they are truely spectacular in the Keys - I think mostly because it can be clearly seen - the backdrop is the wide expanse of the Florida Bay. Of the nearly dozen sunsets I witnessed, only one was a "fizzle" and not one was alike.

I ended up taking literally hundreds of photos of the sun setting. My theory was, given digital film is basically free, taking lots of pictures wouldn't cost hardly anything and might end up with me accidently getting one or two "good ones."

Take 300 pictures, 150 of them will be better than (your) average, right? And maybe, hopefully, a small handful might actually be worth keeping.

I share with you that single, solitary palm tree - out by the water's edge with only a couple regrets.

One, a certain good friend can't see the glory that is in them, and I've no language ability that will convey that intangible feeling of... awe that experienced watching the sun slowly head for the horizon in a final blaze of color, an awe that these photographs can only barely represent and/or preserve.

And second, that you weren't there with me to share the sunsets with me, as they happened.


If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. ~Henry David Thoreau

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982


I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. ~Henry David Thoreau

God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools. ~John Muir


I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. ~Willa Cather, 1913


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~J. Lubbock


A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible. ~Welsh Proverb

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. ~Martin Luther


It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
~Kahlil Gibran


A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~John Muir


There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~Minnie Aumonier

Alone with myself
The trees bend to caress me
The shade hugs my heart.
~Candy Polgar


It is difficult to realize how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our own life is associated with trees. ~Wilson Flagg

The tree is more than first a seed, then a stem, then a living trunk, and then dead timber. The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a shade tree. ~Terri Guillemets

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. ~Chinese Proverb