Trees, Rocks & Patience

I love trees. And rocks.

I didn’t have a doll growing up, not even when I was very little. No stuffed animals either. Every night—even in winter—I’d go out into the garden and find a rock for each hand to take to bed. I’ve spent years wondering why. I never gave myself credit for maybe being so in tune with the inner workings of things that I could see something in a rock no one else could. Maybe I wasn’t so messed up. Maybe I was just unusual—going my own way.

During Covid, I moved up to Maine. I lived with a man for a couple of years, but for the past two, it’s been mostly me. I still head to New York or D.C. to see my beloved child, but I spend more time alone now than ever before. And of course, as the years start to catch up—and I realize they’re not infinitely available to me—I’ve started doing things like standing outside for 15 minutes of sun each morning and walking my dog twice a day. My cousin Alison, who is also a PA and monitors all things health for me, will soon demand I start walking three times. I can already hear her.

I live in this small, unbelievably comforting cottage with a maybe-quarter-acre garden that brings me more joy than the expansive, carefully designed gardens I had in the Hamptons. I planned this one. And this year, my friend Louise is coming up, and I’m actually going to plant a vegetable garden. I know, I know. I’ll let you know how it goes. Yes, I agree, I can’t be trusted to do it all myself—but I may surprise you. My theory is that maybe if I grow the vegetables, I will want to eat them.

But mostly, it’s the trees that slay me.

I’ve always loved trees, but I never knew much about them. Never liked pine trees either until Maine. Now I love them, with their perfect posture and stoic uncomplaining way of carrying heavy things like snow. And now here we are, learning more and more that trees are extraordinary—maybe more extraordinary than we are. Did you know that if one apple tree gets sick in a grove, none of them will bear fruit? Or that when a tree dies in the forest, the others connect to its roots and keep feeding it so it won’t fall over? Eternal life through others. Trees seem to have more grace than humans, who often have zero compassion for other humans. But this is not a political column.

Anyway. I love trees.

There was a huge bush in my little garden, and last summer, my next-door neighbors—lovely landlords who have supported all I’ve done with this home like no other for me—mentioned that a tree was growing right in the middle of said bush. I should probably consider taking it out, they said. Turns out, the tree wasn’t a recent sprout, it’s possibly ten years old. The bush had to go, not the tree.

So the man who helps me around the cottage came a week or so ago and cut out the bush. He pointed out a vine that had tried to strangle one of the tree’s branches. But that branch—well, it didn’t let the vine win. It twisted and grew around it, and now it looks like a corkscrew. You can see it in the image above. That vine was not going to get the better of that tree.

I look at it in awe. Not just because it managed to survive—but because it took so long. I don’t have the patience to grow around something rather than just push my way through it. But now, when I sit outside for my 15 minutes each morning, I look at that corkscrew branch and remind myself: sometimes the only way to get through something is to go around and around and around.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I love trees. And rocks.