Pat Bean's blog

Advice from a Tree: Stand tall and proud. Sink your roots into the earth. Be content with your natural beauty. Go out on a limb. Drink plenty of water. Remember your roots. Enjoy the view. – Ilan Shamir

They’re Huggable

Ralph Marston, author and publisher of The Daily Motivator, asks: “When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing – just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?”

This live oak tree, thought to be more than a thousand years old, can be found on Goose Island State Park in Texas. It too, is one, whose sight causes me to linger. — Photo by Pat Bean.

My answer is yesterday, when I sat on my third-floor living room balcony, at first watching for the hummingbirds that visit my nectar feeder. When they didn’t come, I then simply stared at the multitude of trees visible from my perch. I know of no better way to calm my body and to fill it with a sense of rightness and peacefulness.

Seven tall Ponderosa pines grow in the courtyard. I often wonder why they are

here in the desert where they don’t belong – but I’m glad they are here. Also growing in the courtyard are the deciduous trees whose names I do not know, plus quite a few black olive trees, whose twisted trunks look as if they have been carved into artistic arrangements.

In the undeveloped desert area around my apartment complex, through which there is a short trail, grow a multitude of Palo Verde trees sporting green trunks and limbs. I’ve observed them through the seasons, sprouting greenish-yellow leaves during monsoon and then dropping them to conserve energy when the desert dries up and the heat sends all living things in search of shade.

Me, hugging a tree in Custer State Park in South Dakota. — Photo by one of the day’s traveling companions.

My former home in Utah, which I sold to go traipsing all across North America, had a huge wild elm tree in the backyard. It was the primary reason I had bought the home. It was so huge that it shaded my entire house, which also benefitted from the shadows cast by a tall Ponderosa pine tree on the opposite side. I needed no other air conditioning.

The trees here at my apartment complex in Tucson, where summer temperatures can reach 120 degrees — air conditioning is definitely needed — provide me the shade I need for the brief walks I take with Pepper, my canine companion, during the hottest part of the summer.

I don’t think I could live in a place without trees. And laugh you might, but I’m not just a tree lover, I’m a tree hugger, too. And I have the photo to prove it.

Bean Pat: The Silence of Nature https://travelsandtrifles.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/thesilence-of-nature/  “See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence.” —Mother Teresa

Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y  Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com