Tree Dreams

I wonder if they are maple-syrup sweet

Shhhh. My maple trees are sleeping.

It’s one of the mysteries of winter, how the increasing dark and lower temperatures cue them to slow their growth and enter a kind of dormancy. They begin this process in the fall, when they shed their leaves. During the winter, trees resist environmental signals to continue growing by stopping photosynthesis, and therefore they do not need their leaves. Also called abscission, shedding the leaves allow the trees to conserve energy and water. If you’ve ever admired the pristine beauty of a naked tree dressed in the lacy white of a morning snowfall, you might not think about how this beautiful state of undress serves the practicality of alleviating the weight such a burden can create. Such bareness may look vulnerable, but it also allows the tree to be more pliable when harsh winds blow through, resisting loss of limb and/or more traumatic breakage.

To listen to this post (and a little lullaby from yours truly):

Another cool thing deciduous trees do to survive in the winter is to produce a kind of antifreeze to keep their cells from freezing. They do this by converting cell starches into sugars, which have a lower freezing point. Another strategy of protection is to move water out of their cells through osmosis into the pockets of space between cells, where they are less likely to freeze.

I am not an expert in trees. But I know my maples personally. I have watched them grow from sapling to the tall, willowy creatures they are today. One, I planted on purpose when my eldest son was born. The other two are volunteers. Over the years, they have watched our back yard morph from playset to raised-bed gardening, from carefully pruned landscaping to its current state of re-wilding. They give protection to our backyard birds and the migrants passing through. The gray squirrels play through their limbs and the red-shouldered hawks prey from their branches.

Too many days I peer through my binoculars, through their branches, looking for moving creatures beyond and within their reaching limbs, blind to the pristine beauty that holds up all these glorious creatures that gladden my heart. But this morning?

This morning I looked out the window in the slow-approaching light and thought how beautiful the maples look in the snow. I felt a mild concern for the oldest among them—he has been losing branches during storms, and a thin, green lichen grows in the recesses of his bark. But when I looked deeper, I saw the shy yellow-rumped warbler resting for a minute in his boughs, two gray squirrels chasing each other among his empty arms. You are just fine, I thought, to myself, and felt a warmth inside me.

When I went out to fill my seed feeders, I let myself touch each tree—slow, lingering—the way I caress Bonnie when she snores beside me in our comfy chair, infusing as much love and gratitude into my fingers as I could. After I did the work of feeding the birds, I went back over to our old man maple tree and leaned my cheek into his rough bark, wrapped my arms around his craggy trunk. Are you dreaming, I asked him. And, what do you dream, sweet one? Do you remember the day we sunk your roots into the soil? Are those images as sweet as the sap running through your veins? Is there the taste of maple syrup on the edge of wakefulness? I closed my eyes, hoping he knew me, hoping he felt me there with him. Then, with that white sky witnessing it all above me, I lifted my thin voice up into the air, sang him a lullaby—the one I used to sing to my boys when they were small.

Shhh. My maple trees are sleeping.

Sweet dreams, beautiful ones. Sweet dreams.

Dear ones? I am so grateful for each one of you. But if you are a paid subscriber, would you please send me your snail mail in a DM? I would love to send you a Christmas or New Year’s greeting, along with a small gift, to let you know how much your support means to me. Thank you. Thank you a thousand times.