My Friend, the Tree

My Friend, the Tree

Apple blossoms by the shore – a quiet image of spring and abundance.

Prologue – The Meditation Exercise

It began quietly, on an ordinary day during a meditation retreat. We stood in silence, eyes closed, breath flowing.
The task sounded simple enough: “Picture a tree.”

Roots reaching deep into the earth. Crowns rising towards the sky.
And suddenly, there it was – my tree. I leaned against it, and it lifted me up, let me grow. Not in inches, but in worlds.

The next day the seminar leader asked me: “So, Edith, how did it go with the meditation exercise?”
I told her. She smiled and simply said: “It was easy to see – you kept growing taller.”

Silent refuge in the forest – here I was allowed to grow like a tree.

The First Tree

“Trees bring peace to the souls of people.” – Nora Waln

My first conscious encounter with a tree was an unsettling one. It didn’t happen outdoors, but on television: Death in the Apple Tree.
In the story, a grandfather ties Death to an apple tree to save his grandson. But the longer Death is bound, the greater the suffering becomes, until he is finally set free.

I was eight or nine. What struck me was not the moral, but the image: Death, dark and motionless, crouching among the branches. At night I lay awake, seeing him again and again – and apple trees suddenly felt uncanny to me.

Later, the fear faded. I grew into a country girl who needs trees and greenery around her, because they soothe my soul.

A green roof, a living dome – the beech as a protective cathedral.

Roots & Crowns

Since that meditation exercise, I have looked at trees with different eyes. They are more than landscape, more than decoration.
Their roots speak of grounding, of home, of everything that carries us. Their crowns of departure, of courage, of the longing for light.

Perhaps that is why I love them so much. I stop when I pass an old beech, place my hand on its bark, as if greeting an old friend.

And yet I keep asking: what is it about trees that touches us so deeply? Their constancy amid chaos? Their quiet power to draw life from the soil? Or simply the fact that our own survival is inseparably tied to theirs?

The saint Tukaram Maharaj once said: “Trees are our friends, our protectors.” Without them, life is impossible.

Angkor – where roots embrace temples and rewrite history.

Travel Images

Some trees are cathedrals. In California’s Redwood Forest, I felt tiny – and yet sheltered.
Others are silvery, gnarled olive trees in Tuscany, their leaves like small mirrors reflecting the light of centuries.

Every tree carries a story: in annual rings, in scars, in the quiet dignity with which it simply exists.

Humboldt, Olympic, Redwoods – places that teach humility.

Guardians of time – redwoods that teach us reverence.

And sometimes you meet trees that are long dead – and yet live on. In Australia, we came across bare trunks glowing in deep blue. The Blue Tree Project transforms them into memorials – visible reminders for those who live with invisible wounds.

These trees no longer carry leaves, but they carry a message: that hope can grow even out of silence.

A dead tree living on in blue – the quiet voice of the Blue Tree Project.

The Bridegroom’s Oak

In the north of Germany, in Dodauer Forest near the small town of Eutin, there stands a tree with its very own mailing address: the Bridegroom’s Oak. For more than a hundred years, lovers have dropped letters into its hollow. The post delivers them, and anyone may take one out and reply.

Over the decades, couples have met this way, marriages have been sealed, and stories have begun that no one can count anymore. Some say the tree has brought together more than a hundred bridal couples.

A tree as matchmaker – could anything be more romantic? And in a world ruled by dating apps and endless swiping, the Bridegroom’s Oak is a gentle reminder: love can still happen by chance. Sometimes a letter in a hollow moves more than a thousand digital messages.

The Bridegroom’s Oak – for more than a hundred years, a mailbox of love.

Perhaps I Was Once a Tree

Sometimes I wonder: was I a tree in another life? Rooted and yet free, silent and yet full of life.
Perhaps that is why I so often feel this pull when I walk through a forest – this sense of being among brothers and sisters.

And if not, then maybe in the next life. I imagine myself standing somewhere in Humboldt Forest, tall, calm, and strong.
A tree among trees.

Skyward – the redwoods singing their song of greatness and humility.

Final Chord

Olympic National Park – moss like veils, still waters, roots like fingers in the earth.

My friend, the tree – he knows no haste. He lives in the rhythm of the seasons. Leaves sprout, fall, wither – and yet he remains.

From him I learn that we, too, need roots to hold us. And crowns that let us grow.

Perhaps that is the greatest gift of trees: that they teach us how to live in stillness – and in growth at the same time.

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And I revere them even more when they stand alone.” – Hermann Hesse