Trees

 (image from here)

I love trees. Love them.  It didn't really happen until I moved to Utah and witnessed first-hand their beauty as they change with the seasons and climates.  I remember, in fact, the first tree I feel in love with. It was (is?) along the walkway of the Jesse Knight (Humanities) Building on BYU campus. Living in Helaman Halls at the bottom of the hill, I walked past that tree often on my way to and from campus my first year at college.

I still don't even know what kind of tree it is (growing up in Southern California didn't prove many opportunities for tree observing, and somehow I've still never mastered the skill of learning their names), but it is enormous.  It's long, knarled arms twist their way heavenward in defiance of gravity itself.  All that year I gloried in that tree. I loved it's shade in the early days of fall, and then I smothered a smile as it's red and orange leaves crunched beneath my feet during autumn. I loved it's mighty silhouette during the long cold winter months--reaching, stretching, climbing ever heavenward, like the soul of a man struggling in mighty prayer. And oh how I loved it in the spring with its brilliant neon green leaves, eager and ready for life.

I have tried on many occasions to write a poem about trees, but to no avail. I cannot seem to simplify the enormity of their majesty in mere words. Even poetic words. They symbolize too much for me--of life, of what it means to become even as God and Jesus Christ, of joy and beauty, of all that is good. (You see? Even here my attempts sounds silly and trite.)

I know, you probably think I'm a little crazy. After all, they're only trees. But oh, in other ways, they seem the very breath of life. I hope with all my heart that someday my house is surrounded by trees. A little wood in the backyard where my little ones can ramble. Jeremy laughs at me when I say these types of things (he aspires to city dwelling), but I'm serious. That little "house of dreams" that I drew pictures of as a little girl had a white picket fence, red shutters, and trees. Sigh. A girl can dream, right?