A Tree's Tears

Healing takes time...

In March 2021, I hiked to the top of the Pony Mountain in Western Massachusetts and sat next to a pine tree I adore. She was hurt, bleeding. A name: ‘Toby’ was carved into her trunk. Sticky, resinous tears dripped from the edge of each letter. The tree couldn't run or walk away when Toby etched into her. I felt angry, sad, and helpless all at once. I loathed Toby. I know white pines are monoecious — with both male and female cones on the same tree — but this tree felt feminine to me. I identified. I thought of the way men’s names are carved all over the Earth and women’s bodies.

I decided to sit with the tree during my regular hike to be a friend and witness to the many stages of healing: the pain of the fresh wound, the oozing of resin, the drying, cracking, healing over, oozing again, and the long stain of tears.

I’ve been coming here for months and it seems the tree is getting to know me. It might be my imagination but there is a softness when I sit with her. A deeper level of connection and dropping in. Trees are not just scenery or resources or even oxygen providers but living beings with their own desire to grow, to flourish, and be free. Maybe not in the ways that humans define those words and ideas but I see the tree reaching towards the sun. I witness her striving, I see her growth, her forest community. 

For months, amber tears flow and in August 2021, they begin to dry and create long white stains. I put my hand against her trunk as I begin walking down the mountain, and notice many of the tears are still wet. Parts of the wound are still attempting to heal. It’s been 6 months. It can take a lifetime to heal from one thoughless moment of abuse.

In September her sticky tears are still dripping down to the ground, glistening in the summer sun. I wonder if anyone else laments the tree's wounds?

I visited the tree regulary from March 2021 to September 2022 but then I moved further away, got busier and didn’t visit for a while. I felt as though I’d been neglecting a friend so today I went back to sit with her. It felt good. It looks as though she has healed but her scars are there, and will always be.

I sit for a while, seeing the world from her perspective. It is beautiful. Tall evergreens surround her, and I see she is held in community. I look up as a red-tailed hawk circles above us reminding me that healing is not a linear process but an ongoing spiral into subterranean spaces, through darkness and out into light.

I reflect on our common ancestry — the hawk, the tree and I. We are the stuff of stars.