How has a tree or trees in your life made it better?

I was just responding to another forum and thought about this topic. I have spent much of my life loving the spectacular uniqueness of trees. So I thought we could reminisce about past tree events that made our lives better.
One I remember was an oak tree in Michigan that I spent many hours sitting in the crotch of a three way trunk listening to the world of forest. I was there hunting and it taught me how to sit and listen to all the noises of the forest. I enjoyed the leaves rustling in the wind. (Oak trees kept their leaves in the winter there) I sat hidden amazed at the beauty of the prey that I hunted. I captured the lives of foxes jumping and running chasing mice and rabbits. I heard the screech of the owl, and Hawk. The place in the tree I sat was made for my comfort and let me sit and look up at the clouds passing over and see the birds perched in its branches. I never gave this tree a name cause I felt it owned me and probably had a name for me. I visit its site when ever I go home and need to get in touch with what was important in life. It unlike most childhood things it hasn't gotten smaller only more comfortable for me to sit and feel its presence.

That's beautiful Sofer.

It's also very hard to follow!

When I was about 4 yrs old we moved into our first real house, with a real back yard and a real apple tree. My oldest brother went right out and bought me a tire swing....I was the youngest in the family and our father was not with us. I loved that swing and that tree. When I think of happy times in my childhood that's what I think of...a tire swing and apple blossoms. A tire swing and the ground littered with golf ball sized apples that were only good for throwing at your brothers. I can still remember the rough feel of the bark and the large branch the swing hung from. I never thought about it before, but I always considered that my tree. I don't know what ever happened to the swing, I don't remember anyone ever taking it down, and I know I'd remember it. My Mom sold her house about 10 years ago to a young couple with two children. I hope kids still swing on tire swings today, they are missing a lot if they don't.

This is a great thread. Thanks Sofer.
Heather

Yes I feel the same swing in my past. Thank you Heather.

Steve,great forum!So many memories of trees in my life!Here is a short story.Every Sunday afternoon,after church,Mom and Dad would take me to visit Granpa Greenup at his farm in the Missouri River bottoms.My favorite tree,my place,my secret place,was in an oak tree,just like yours,but,it was a magic place also!Because,every time,after I came down from that tree,I would find a bright,shiny silver dollar!manoman........Dave

So were there Leprechans or fairies when you asked grandpa what happened? Nice Gramps.

This is a nice thread.

Last night in the winds our big aspen broke. The top came crashing down, somehow missing a nice small subalpine fir and my wood shed. It was a big old tree. So today my DH and I have been been experiencing something a lot like mourning. Amazing how trees become part of our lives.

I have always been touched with tree stories like these ,unfortunantly not all have happy endings.The one I'm thinking of rested in an open rural area,and as story has it it was too large to push up when the land was made into a pasture before wwII.My memories go back to high school ,and the old hangout in the shade of the white oak along a dirt road . There were many tales of history around the old tree,such revolution war,civil war etc.,with only past down facts,the only thing I knew ,for sure the tree measured a little over 9' in dia.I don't mean large knarley roots,I mean solid #1-2 timber.The town looked like it was going to develope on that side of town , and progress moved in ,as I40 went in in the direction of that side of town,and service statoins went up,and I40 took a diferent direction,leaving ,today abandon station,instead of the tree,and a desmil felling when I visit.Mike

Somehow, I have a sense of safeness, security, up in the trees. My brothers built a treehouse when I was young, and I remember thinking how stupid it was, confined in that one part of that one tree. No, I like to roam in the trees.

I had a nickname as a kid-Rock (short for Rocky the Flying Squirrel), because I was climbing trees all the time, and still do. That's how I found out about the westernmost natural outlier of Tsuga canadensis in central Minnesota. Someone asked me if I would climb the trees to get seed. Hemlocks are one of the easiest trees to climb, BTW.

Ahh Leftwood yes they are IF you are a contortionist. the branching is kind of tight in Michigan. But the spider webs are thick.

Well Sofer, I have been accused of being too agile for my age. Some of that stuff about acting your age is downright silly, if you ask me.

There was an old fig, covered in ants, and an old plum tree that we made jam from a few summers. But as a kid, I didn't pay much attenteion to them. Then my parents took us on vacation to see the giant sequoia redwoods. The silence of the forest, broken by softly crunching footsteps and blue jay calls, the feeling of power and age and wisdom in those tall, old trees - even a 10 year old could feel it. And now, I live in the High Desert with lots of sand and sage, and the very first thing we did when we moved in was to plant some 3 ft tall black austrian pines. I won't see them grow to 50 ft, but someone will.

Nuts, no one will ever accuse ME of that, unfortunately! I much prefer staying on the ground, or even lying on the ground, and looking up at them.

And I still have tree stories accumulating nearly every day. But it all started when I stuck three silver maple seeds in my sandbox in Blue Island Illinois during my kindergarten year, and they sprouted quickly enough to reward my impatient childhood attention span. (Had I planted walnuts or basswood seeds there instead, I might be a truck driver or plumber today!) My dad planted one of my maple seedlings in the front yard of that house in about 1953, and it was still there last time I checked.

When I was in high school, we had moved to a rural home in northwest Indiana. There was a fencerow black cherry along the back of the field, and just past that fencerow was a 345KV power line tower. A pair of redtailed hawks nested on the tower, and I found a perch similarly comfortable to yours (but only about 15 feet up) where I could relax and watch them and listen to their screams rising above the hums and crackles of the electric lines.

Guy S.

That is why you are a genius the OZONE at such a young age. Thanks for the stories Guy and Kmom.

I agree that looking up into trees from a prone position can be just as gratifying as looking down from them.

But you don't have the sun in your eyes.

Good thread. In our family, several of us have very fond memories of "Mom's Christmas Tree". The term Christmas tree is loosely applied to any spruce or fir where I grew up. And in the back yard was a hum dinger of a Red Spruce that we called "Mom's Christmas Tree".

(Bear with me here, this really is a happy memory. Getting there involves crossing a little rough ground first. No sympathy please.)

The reason for the name was because that is where Ma used to hide when the old man came home drunk and in a rage. The branches of this tree swept all the way to the ground, were closely spaced and were about 3-4 inches/7-10cm in diameter. High up in the tree, we had wound a large rope around 4 or 5 branches and made a floor that also held a blanket so that the rope (about 2 inch/5cm dia) didn't hurt. Anyhow, Ma would easily climb the tree to escape as he drove up the lane, and nobody ever told him where she was. Several of us kids would also climb and she would tell us stories of the old days, about her father, sometimes we would just watch the goings on at the house, with the old man rampaging around and swearing. After a few hours he either went back to town to a bar or fell asleep and we would climb down.

Visiting my brother in western WA state, home to many large "Christmas Trees", we have both mused on how many more nice trees they have for climbing, and how idyllic the times were that we spent hiding in Mom's Christmas Tree. Because we were kids (6-10 years old), we figured everybody needed a hiding place from drunks on a tear, (everybody thinks they grow up normal) and always felt lucky that we had the coolest place to hide in all the world.

Penn Pete your tree was more than special. A tree is a hiding place, an escape, a dreamland, a home with special moments. Thanks for the survival and story.

Pete, that has got to be the best story, ever. I hope you have it written in a journal somewhere.

Rick

Great thread! The house where I grew up, near Philadelphia, had two huge old trees that were very special in my childhood. In the backyard was an ancient beech that cast deep shade over the entire yard. My father couldn't grow grass to save his life there, but Lilies of the Valley and ivy ran wild, and it was a special forest wonderland for childhood adventures. In the front was an old maple. My folks bought the house when my mother was expecting me, and at that time the tree had some large dead limbs. A "tree man" removed them, but told my folks the tree was infested with borers and was dying. They loved the tree and didn't want to take it down; it provided lovely shade for the house, which was important in those old pre-a/c days. My folks moved out of the house to a retirement home fifteen years ago (I'm now 57), and the tree is still there; a few more limbs are gone, but it keeps on keeping on. Trees could teach us much about patience and survival, no?

Several morals there. Never kill the messenger, Never let anyone take away your dream, never trust just one expert, Always remember the special times...... Thanks Spartacusaby.
I have so many special tree times. Another one is about my childhood and going through the early manhood years when you had deep discussions with a friend who had been there with you all through childhood. His name was Tom. We often met on a high river bank above a sandy beautiful river. This oak had long branching over the bank and we took our lives in our hands and hung a huge rope swing 40' out over the river, a 100' below. Now the rope itself was about 60' long and we could start behind the oak and soar out over our river and fly with delight. This moment was repeated thousands of times over and over. Never reaching a state of boredom. This was our hang out as we started into Junior high and talked about girls, dogs, school, Star trek, basketball the list was unending. We became a friendship that ( I'm crying now) should never have ended. One day in college I got a phone call from my mom and she told me that my buddy Tom died in Vietnam. They never found his body and I never got to swing with him again. I sure miss him. That same day I was diagnosed with Diabetes and my draft # was 360. I did not go to find him but I sure would have liked to.

I love trees, always have.
At our rental house when I was a kid, about 5 or 6, I remember my dad burst in the house, ranting about some guy pruning trees on the property we rented.
My dad was mad because the guy said to him "I hate trees!" "I wish there were no trees!" Dad said he yelled something back over the noise of the chainsaw, but the guy yelled back that he wished the world was "all paved over". That made my dad really mad, and I felt mad, too. How could anyone wish for greenery to be paved over?

30 years later, trees are just as important to me. I'm growing trees from seed, then planting them and/or giving them away (I sell some too) , just for my own satisfaction that there are more trees in my neighborhood.
Dads are important for kids. So, the real take-home message is that a Dad influenced his daughter to have a good heart for nature. (He's now physically dependent on my mom's care, BTW, because he is too weak to care for himself these days.) I've planted about 50 trees on my parents' place.



This message was edited May 21, 2006 2:30 AM

I think my best tree memories are the old pecan trees in my yard. I used to pick up pecans with my grandfather when I was a kid and put them in old paprer sacks. Everytime I see some on the ground I think to myself, sure bet 'pawpaw' would like these pecans.

I have no memories of special trees, except for a distant neighbor's apple trees that we, as young children, loved to climb and eat the fruit, when our folks went to visit them. My folks had no large trees in their yard at that time. When I was 13 we moved and there were large cottonwood trees there that I climbed.
Now we live in the midst of woods, and I have planted many more trees in our yard.
As for the question in the thread's title.....my trees have made our life so much better by the shade they cast on our house, and their beauty. Our house stays at least 10 degrees cooler now that it is shaded.

Anyone ever read the book "Where the Red Fern Grows"? That book embodies my childhood memories of a conifer woodland with ferns blanketing the ground. So quiet with an incredible wave of acres and acres of ferns under the pine trees. Indescribable when you go out with your dog. I own that property now and have added a few adjacent tracts so our kids go out into the very same woods and I am convinced they will have fond memories of this land to share when they grow up. I have no specific memories or heart wrenching memories such as that Penn_Pete shared but I do remember sneaking up into my brothers' tree house when we moved to Illinois and feeling jealous that I didn't have a place to go to escape such as that. I loved the perspective on the world from being about 25' of the ground looking down and I distinctly recall that one could see the movie paying at the old drive in theater on weekends which was kind of cool. I had to wait until they were gone to get up in their treehouse or I would have been booted. It had a sign that said no girls allowed. We had a pussywillow tree planted at that house and in spring I'd cut some of the branches and try to make a floral arrangement. It was beautiful and I know so because my mother told me so. I was very proud of my pussywillow centerpiece. I too planted seeds as a child. I placed them in little cups on the kitchen window sill. I don't recall anything germinating but I've made up for lost time in that department. Lemme see, one time I walked into a tree. I had been leaning against it and forgot it was there. Someone called my name and I turned around and walked smack dab into the tree and ended up getting stitches in my lip. The tree won, they usually do. I show my kids the tree that "beat" me and then they beg to see the scar by making me pull out my lip so that the faint line shows. When they were younger, they begged me to show my battle scar to their friends and they'd run off giggling about how I had walked into a tree. I love trees, I always will.

This is a really neat thread.

LOL, Equil. I never walked into a tree, but I backed into one when I was in my late teens. I had a Maroon 1939 Ford coupe . I had it full of girl friends and was backing up when I came to an abrupt stop. No harm done, either to my car, the tree, or the occupants of my car......:-)
I ended up rolling the car in Nevada.....but that's another story.

Equil thank you for the picture "the road less traveled". I love the small white pine and the bracken fern mixed poplar trees. We need to continue a woodland, or other favorite tree picture with each discussion. It doesn't need to be the one discussed. Like this one below.
I had a similar tree inpact story where I was motocrossing through the woods on a long poker run. I was by myself and I missed a turn and impacted a triple trunk tree with my helmet. I hit it head on and my helmet was pinched against my chin so I couldn't remove it. I stayed there for over 3 hours until some one came with a chain saw to cut the helmet off. Oh they used the chain saw on my helmet, not the tree. That was a trip.

Where the Red Fern Grows. I recommended it to my niece last month.

Wow, that's an amazing tree! I have many wonderful memories and only comforting feelings about trees. I also picked Pecans with my little cajun grandmother that I miss sooo much. Nothing compared to her pecan pie from pecans we picked that day!! The live oaks in Lousianna at my grandparents were the best! Walking right up a tree so massive and getting so high with ease was definately cool. Climbing high up a not so easy to climb tree to escape my two big brothers needling was enpowering! They couldn't figure out how to get up there. They were scared and too heavy they would break the branches. Tire swings........the list is endless! Thanks for this thread!

I grew up in Aiken, South Carolina, as far into the interior of SC as you can get, flat land, no mountains, woods all around. In summer, it was HOT and SO HUMID you could wave your hand around and see the air move. My street was lined with huge old live oaks and I remember as a very young girl being so grateful for the shade they gave.

That's what I grew up thinking: "Trees give."

Now I'm thinking "Give back."
http://treegrowersdiary.com/index.html

Nice thread. Thanks Soferdig!
--Joulz

Joooolz, do you know my bud Bob McCartney? Have you seen the Aiken Quercetum he's creating down there? Pretty impressive!
Guy S.

Thank God you had your helmet on Soferdig! What's the tree in the pic, do you know how old it might be?

I'll guess it's a mossy old Sitka spruce -- ?

Guy S.

Growing up in southeast Louisiana I came from a long line of people who loved gardening and landscaping. My grandfather was a contemporary of Monet and there was correspondence between them on gardening. My dad learned his love of trees and gardening from his parents as did my mother. My mother's favorite was the live oak.
When I was very little my dad put a swing on a live oak for me. I was the youngest of eight so I pretty much grew up like topsy. I would swing high into the branches of that oak from morning til night. Years later the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers bulldozed the house and all the trees and gardens on our place to "build an emergency levee." We had tied a big yellow ribbon around it hoping it would be spared and my parents posed for the news media next to it; they were near 80 years old then and it was an awful tragedy to be losing everything.
I never forgot my oak tree with the swing in it. Several years ago I was named chairman of the Live Oak Society. As chairman (though I would have probably done it had I not been chairman), one of my biggest triumphs has been to save an ancient live oak from the clutches of the highway department and the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers who were going to destroy it to build a highway and a drainage system. They found a better way to do it after I created national interest in the live oak.
I dreamed many dreams as I flew on my swing into the beautiful green of our live oak. The birds loved it, too, and the songs of the mockingbirds still resound in my memory.
And, you know what, until I wrote this piece I had never put this all together. The live oak, the Corps, the saving of Old Dickory and my love for the Quercus virginiana.

Very interesting thread. In this area I think every tree is very important, as there are not as many trees as there are for you who live in a maybe warmer zone , with more moisture.

Two trees that I remember fondly were already growing when we bought the house and orchard where we lived for fifty years, I call it my old Place. The trees were American Elm, took me a couple of years to identify them. They were quite young when we moved into the house, actually was our honeymoon time. As I remember the trunks were only 4 or 5" in diameter. The worst problem they had over the years were aphids. As they grew taller they outgrew the heighth my husband could reach with the orchard sprayer. I did finally find a product that I could drill holes in the ground and pour the solution in and kind of kept the aphids in control that way. I emphasized to the woman who bought the house and yard, 12 years ago, that they were quite rare trees and she should try to keep them growing and when I occcasionally drive by I can see they are still growing.

Trees are very important to me and even before I moved into my house area here I planted trees.

Donna

I love trees.. I really can't imagine living where there are none. I feel great joy reminiscing just the past ten years or so around trees. I have planted literally hundreds as wind breaks and wildlife havens for several years at our residence and small acreage. Year after year I have ordered bundles(25 very small bare root trees) of native Missouri trees and have planted them in long rows. No they don't all live but I replace them the following year. I've watered them during dry times, kept the weeds down around them, and mostly enjoyed watching them slowly grow over the past decade.I mow between the rows to keep the weeds down and the trees have grown better. Today these trees provide excellent wildlife habitat and viewing, my kids play around them, and slowly but surely the cold westerly and northerly winds of winter don't hit our house quite as hard now. More shade cools some of the heat of summer. I've seen the uniqueness of red oaks, bur oaks, eastern white pines, sweet gums, black walnuts, green and white ash, etc. grow into nice trees in just one decade.
I built a tree house( treated lumber)in some timber at the edge of our property for our kids a few years ago. It is so beautiful to watch wildlife from. My kids are making memories having a place to go in the timber which has some nice sized oaks, hickories, walnuts, etc. I go there to relax and bird watch at times. The solitude makes me think of simplier times gone by......inside I smile. I won't live to see these trees mature but my kids hopefully will. My prayer is that nobody will cut them down before there time.

cuckoo

I think Steve has a best-seller book half written already.
We all get to share the royalties!!!

LOL, you aren't just the Live Oak Lady -- you are the live oak itself. It's in your blood and in your heart. No one else could have assumed that chairman position so naturally.

Guy S.

LOL you are the wind in the trees, the hope that spurs them on, the force that keeps them growing, and more importantly the Human Oak that stands to protect the essence of this thread. Thank you! Steve
Guy I'm thinking about a title like: "Floem souls and xylem moments"
Cuckoo4rblackbe I see the hope that fills your moments of creation. And knowing that none of us see the magnificense of our plantings. But we feed on the anticipation and expectation of others in awe when confronted with eden.
Donna we have seen your garden of forest to be and I can't wait to partake of it soon.
Oh the trees above are on a rainy bay on Kodiak Island and are probably young. 50 yrs or so. I saw pictures of this area in WWII and there were hardly any Sitka Spruce on the island now the upper aspects are rich with this spectacular monoculture. The advance on the Island is about 1mile every 10 years.

I've always loved trees - so when we found this modern house with these beech trees in the backyard - that was that, we bought it. We've been told there are 4 different varieties of European Beech - all about 80' tall - the biggest one (which is named "the princess tree" or "pooh" depending on which kid you ask) has a circumference of 13'. We have lots of glass in the house, and the trees are very close - so they provide endless pleasure - when it rains the water cascades down the trunks in sheets, they provide much needed shade (it's a 10 or 15 degree difference on a hot day under the beeches) - they are living sculpture. We protect them, they protect us.

We were told by our architect that this land used to be a picnic area for the big estates at the turn of the century - and also that he suspected that Frederick Law Olmstead (of the Boston Emerald Necklace fame) had something to do with them since they are unusual. Have never been able to substantiate that, though we do know that FLO frequented this town and helped with public spaces & nearby private estates.

It's hard to explain to "non-tree" people what it's like to live with these giants. When we first bought our house and had a party, many people said "oh, you are going to take those trees down, right? they are too close to the house!". It was all we could do not to ask them to leave after saying such a thing! And don't worry - this house was built in 1965 and 40+ years later the trees seem healthy and stable (we had 2 cabled, and have a fabulous local arborist who trims them and checks on them).

Someone once remarked that we are living here at the "right" time - that these were planted a long time ago, and they are so graceful in their old age. I hope to have as much grace in MY old age!

Kara

and one more shot

from this perspective they look small, but are not!