Shelter: A Love Letter to Trees

The Valley Oak

The first tree, of course, was not the first tree, but the one I remember most. A California valley oak with a black tire swing hanging from it—an actual tire that filled with rain and worms in the spring. It looked like one of the ugliest of humanity’s inventions hung on one of nature’s most beautiful. But once it was emptied, I could balance myself on that ugly tire and watch everything spin, the world of leaves above me, each branch leading to some new ecosystem.

That tree, the way I could bend my body backward, the way I could watch how it swayed even as I spun in circles, I loved it. My brother would spin me until I was almost sick. How funny to think of getting sick on trees. I would steady myself by staring at the trunk, I could see the striated bark come into focus, could feel my legs find their roots again and come to standing.

When I had flying dreams I often flew over that California valley oak. I liked flying dreams best, not just because I was flying but because I could see the trees more clearly.

Hug-a-Tree

When I was only five years old, a program called Hug-a-Tree was established. As I remember it now, we were supposed to hug trees to feel better. I remember doing this on some nature excursion—really hugging a tree as hard as I could—and then suddenly being worried that I would break into tears. The tree was so sturdy and warm. I loved the tree so much it hurt.

But like most things I remember, I have remembered it incorrectly. The Hug-a-Tree program was established to find lost children in the wilderness. In 1981, a nine-year-old boy named Jimmy Beveridge was lost on Palomar Mountain, 60 miles east of San Diego. He was on a Saturday hike with his two brothers when he was lost and 400 searchers, including 200 Marines, combed every inch of the area before his curled-up body was finally found four days later. He had died of hypothermia.

The full name of the program was and is Hug-a-Tree and Survive. A child was supposed to find a tree and stay there. The idea being to stay put, to not wander farther off into the woods. The program was established in Jimmy Beveridge’s honor by a man who was on the search team and who was a Border Patrol agent for three decades. He chased down immigrants trying to cross the border. He could spot a bent twig, a rock out of place, and know how to track someone. He was a human tracker, used to getting his man. He couldn’t find Jimmy though. I don’t know why I don’t remember the survive part of the program. Nor the story of the lost boy. I just remember that if something was wrong, a tree was supposed to fix it.

The Yellow Plum

The mirabelle plum tree was my first lesson in the problems of abundance. A tree from Lorraine, France, it produces a sweet yellow stone fruit, and in a good year, it felt like we had thousands of them, so sugar-filled in the summer heat, it was like tree candy. I fed them to our dog, Dusty, a yellow Lab the same color as the golden plums themselves, until we both got sick.

When the tree