We moved into our new house a few days before Christmas, and the Earth celebrated by raining for three weeks straight. There was no outside time, only inside time, and I watched as Rocky admired the rain drops from the window. Three weeks turned into six, and before we knew it, we woke up to alarming text messages from loved ones about the California floods. When the clouds finally cleared, and the sun peeked its way back into our world, I took Rocky for our first walk in the neighborhood. A couple of blocks from home, a tree emerged from the middle of the concrete sidewalk and stopped us right in our tracks. She was a massive eucalyptus tree, majestically big. Her branches surely reach heaven, I thought as I looked up, trying to find the blue sky through her limbs. Her smell was wildly intoxicating, as if she exhaled the scent of fresh rain on fresh earth. I put my hand on her trunk and felt her pulsing presence.
On the way back home, I couldn’t help myself. As we crossed her path again, I wrapped my arms around her old, thick trunk. “What are you doo-ling mama?” Rocky asked, confused as she watched me from her stroller. “I’m saying thank you to this tree,” I said, stepping back. I did this every time we walked by her.
A few weeks later, I started reading Finding The Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, an ecologist who writes about tree wisdom and coined the term “mother tree.” Her work scientifically proved what indigenous people have known for eons: Trees are highly intelligent and are a part of an interconnected community, protecting and guiding their own and other species. In a single forest, a mother tree is connected to hundreds of other trees. The mothers communicate with the young seedlings around them, share excess carbon and nitrogen when needed, and change their root structure to make room for the baby trees. The first time I read the words ‘mother tree’ I immediately thought of the eucalyptus near our house. She was a mother, a matriarch amongst giants. I had no language for her prior to this, no name to call her by, but every time I walked by her, I felt her maternal magic and bowed at her roots.
And then last week, they cut her down. All of her.