Call me a Druid. Call me a pagan. Call me a tree hugger. I don’t care. I love trees.
I don’t just mean that I enjoy looking at trees, or that I appreciate all they contribute to the health and well‑being of our world. I don’t just mean I enjoy their shade or the cool breezes they send my way. I mean that I have formed genuine relationships with a number of trees in my life.
When I was growing up, a large cottonwood tree was my constant playmate and companion. I climbed it, played in its fallen leaves and pretended its cottony seeds were a snowfall on my Dallas lawn. I spent countless hours in the shade of that tree and it was a true friend.
I also bonded with a cedar tree that bordered my grandmother’s front yard and a plum tree that grew outside my bedroom window at the east Texas farmhouse where I lived as a teenager.
I bought a house a few years ago after decades of being a wandering apartment tenant. In the center of my new front yard was a young maple tree. It was just beyond sapling size, not truly a tree yet. I watched it with love, tended it and talked to it. I watered its roots in the summer and raked its leaves in the fall. I smiled when I saw the first squirrel scamper up its trunk. I eagerly anticipated the turning of its leaves after a cold snap. I paid a lot of attention to that tree, and under my loving care it grew and flourished.
Last spring my tree provided shelter to its first birds’ nest. I was delighted. I watched the adult birds flying in and out, heard the chirping of the hidden babies as they demanded their feeding. Then one morning, as I gazed out my dining room window, I noticed four or five tiny birds pecking away at my front lawn. It took a moment for me to notice the Mama Bird that darted around them, providing aerial cover. Then I understood. These were “my” babies, and they had just been pushed from the nest to get their own meal for the first time.
Now it was time for the flying lesson. Mama Bird flitted around them, demonstrating, urging, flying up then back then up then back again. Soon the chicks began to get the idea. First one and then another took to the air. Their efforts were feeble at first, but their confidence grew quickly—all except for one.
One baby bird had been frightened by its expulsion from the nest and the shock of its strange new surroundings. It took refuge on my front porch and didn’t want to budge. The Mama Bird noticed and came to give special instruction. She patiently flew back and forth, from the porch railing to the frightened baby’s side, demonstrating over and over the process of flight. She even nudged the chick once or twice with her beak to break its paralysis and get it moving. Finally the baby half‑fluttered, half‑flew across the porch and into the grass with its nestlings.
By this time the other babies were beginning to grasp the whole concept of flight. They immediately began to dash about, first at low altitude, then higher. They ventured one house away, two houses away, turning and returning to their base, only to dart off again. They flew in tight formation, briskly and with a clear joy at their new‑found skill. They landed on roofs, on wires, on other trees, flitting first one way and then another. Their slower sibling finally joined in the play, and a new generation of birds graduated into the next stage of life.
I watched all this from my window. My spirit was elated to see the sheer pleasure of the baby birds in their first flight. I felt proud for the Mama Bird and celebrated along with her the successful launch of her brood. I was beside myself with joy that my tree played such an important part in this small, quiet drama.
During the cold spell of a few weeks ago, the last of the leaves fell from my tree. The warm weather that followed has encouraged it to bud out all over. There’s eighteen inches of new growth at the tops of all the branches, and my tiny little maple tree is now as tall as my house. It’s still not a big tree, but it’s now a true tree.
I’m eagerly awaiting the next pair of nesting birds.