One morning, not so long ago, I had a dream. I was in the desert taking refuge in a little adobe souvenir shop. It was hot and brilliantly bright outside and I was gazing at the view outside the square pane-less window. What I saw astounded me: a very long, long dead tree had fallen, stretching from outside the little shop to maybe half a mile away. All the branches and roots had rotted away leaving only the tree trunk. There was no bark left and it looked like it was on it's way to petrifying. I couldn't tell how old the tree was or how long it had laid there but it was beautiful and it was huge.
For some odd reason I decided I needed to go out into the desert sun and hike to the end of it. I had a clear view of the base of the tree and wanted to see the top, but it was so far away I risked dehydration before I could finish the hike. The shop owner warned me against it, but I was convinced I'd have no trouble, so I left the shop and started my long walk to the top of the tree.
When I woke up from this strange dream there was a chorus singing in my ear, "I'm home. I'm ho-o-ome," over and over again.
Of course, my waking thought was, "What the heck was that about?" I listened to the song for a few more minutes as it continued to play in my head, then I got out of bed, went about my day, and finally forgot about it.
Two doors down, right in front of a neighbor's house, there was a willow oak tree that was so old and tall - over 50 feet tall - that it loomed above the house. It had spread it's gargantuan limbs so far and wide that it covered their house, my house, and the house in between us. It was also too close to the house, so had to lean out toward the street to avoid growing into the walls. This in itself was amazing enough because you could see that somehow the tree knew to keep it's distance; when you looked at it from the side, there were thick branches growing away from the house and over the roof, and there was no evidence that any had been trimmed between it and the house. It had grown over the years in tandem with the house.
The other amazing thing was that even though there was evidence of some rotting in the trunk, the tree was still deemed healthy by arborists and was capable of living another 50 years or more.
The problem was that it was leaning enough to make us nervous and was huge. Most of it's limbs were as large as the trunks of the other trees in our neighborhood. Generations of different squirrel families had lived in it crooks. Every year it took up to two months to rake up it's fall leaves. When I looked out my bedroom window I had the feeling of living in a tree house, and this tree was two houses away!
Unfortunately we were getting hit every year by stronger and stronger storms, and everybody worried that it would give up in the wind, come down and take a few houses, gas lines and cars with it. People all over the D.C. area were cutting down their old trees for the same reason - not too long ago someone died in his car while sitting in traffic as a tree limb came crashing down on him. My neighbor and owner of the house two doors down was attached to this old oak, and everybody living under it was attached also, so when she finally decided to cut it down after our last hurricane we were a bit in shock. We never expected her to actually do it.
Within a couple of days of learning about her decision, the tree started to disappear. First the tree trimmers attacked the right half of the tree, cutting it back limb by limb. Two days later they came back to strip it of it's other half, leaving the tree armless and bare. We in the neighborhood could feel it's pain. It looked like a 50 foot tall giant that had just had his arms amputated. It was bad.
During this monumental tree trimming, I decided I needed to distance myself from the ordeal and listened to a meditation by Eva Gregory. The goal of the meditation was to get us, the internet audience, in touch with our higher self and find some guidance. I put on my headsets to try to drown out the incessant power saw drone and followed Eva's calming voice into another realm. Once I was relaxed and in the presence of my higher self I asked him if he had any messages.
He said, "Don't go home."
A switch went off in my head that put my dream, which I'd had only the week before, back into my memory banks. I realized the tree was trying to tell me something.
The more I thought about it the more I realized that it had been a very protective and loving tree. It's roots had to be as big and as far reaching as the tree was above ground, which meant it was holding up all three of our houses. It's branches had spread over us like a protective blanket; it was animal and bird friendly and stood strong and present, taking in everything that went on around it. It was there before our houses were built, over 50 years ago - it watched the residents move in and move out, showered our lawns with nutrient rich leaf trash, blocked the highway noise and northern cold fronts in the winter and provided very needed shade from the hot summer sun. We surmised it was at least 79 years old or more and it felt like a grandparent. It had adopted us, like we adopt cats and dogs, to become our friend and protector. I'd always taken comfort from it's strength and beauty.
And the tree knew the end was coming.
Even when the last day came and the tree people came to cut down the rest of the tree it tried to reach out to me.
They had their cherry picker at the top and were lopping off the tip of the tree bit by bit. I sat on the bench in my living room to watch - I had a clear view of the poor old thing from one of my windows. My radio was on and a song started to play - one last message for/from my old friend.
"So long, I hate to see you go, but I'll save my tears for later on down the road.
How come I keep on holding on, knowing you won't be coming home."
It's a song by Robert Cray called, "(Won't be) Coming Home." Have you heard it? I hadn't until that minute. After listening to the song for a few minutes I got up and went into the kitchen, flabbergasted by all of the coincidences and disheartened by the site of the death of a friendly giant.
It took almost week of 12 hour days for those guys to get that tree down to a stump. Now I have an unfamiliar view of the sky from my bedroom window. The squirrels and birds that called that tree home are now scrambling to find new winter hide-a-ways. I raked up it's leaves for the last time and found a piece of the tree to take home for a keepsake - a reminder that trees have souls and are always working with us whether we know it or not. I think I'll carve a heart into it.
Even though we'll never have to worry about the big old willow oak falling over or dropping a heavy limb on a car, we were all sad to see it go. The owner of the house fought it for years; I'm sure she's the most upset of all of us. She was very attached to grandfather willow oak.
Like me, you're probably wondering what "home" has to do with this tree. I really don't know. Maybe it's how trees feel when their roots are spreading through the earth, maybe our homes are mostly made of trees so they feel a great part of our lives, or maybe "home" is a code word for something even greater. The best answer I have is the link I have between this tree and a communication I had maybe 10 years ago.
I was on a little island to the west of Vancouver learning from Penelope Smith how to communicate with animals. It was a week-long class and every day Penelope would talk to the group for a few hours then send us out to practice what we learned. One day she gave us some homework - we were to find a tree, connect to it mentally, and have a conversation. Some of us had better success and longer discourses than others; I was somewhat successful with the tree I chose by getting an answer to one question: Where am I going?
The answer I got was, "You're going home."
I guess that became my access code to the trees of the earth.
Good bye old friend. I'll be listening for more messages. Home will never be the same without you.
