I HAVE CHERISHED a good number of trees over the years. Some I have planted myself in my yard and others belong to neighbors, strangers, parks and public forests. I’ll gladly drive a longer route home just to see if a certain flowering magnolia in town has begun blooming in late April, or if an old sugar maple near the high school is displaying its usual fall fire, with some leaves as orange as the skin on a good Halloween pumpkin.
There is a sprawling sycamore tree in Providence’s Roger Williams Park under which my mother had a picture taken before I came along. My siblings and I once sat on one of its low-hanging branches, as did my children. One day soon I’ll visit that tree with my grandchildren. I’m sure that it won’t much matter to them when I point out the eye-catching multi-colored patchwork bark or tell them that they are at least the fourth generation of the family to sit under that tree. But it might someday.
If you love trees as I do, you certainly find it incomprehensible
