Experiencing the comfort of trees

“You’re permeable to your surroundings,” a neighbor of mine once said after I told her how difficult it was for me to work in a busy newspaper office, with dozens of people around me, the phone ringing, and the police scanner announcing the next house fire or traffic accident.

That job was short-lived. I now work by myself.

My whole self is influenced by where I am. When I’m in the city, everything, my thoughts and feelings, my writing, how I interact with the world, are, to a certain degree, shaped by the sharp edges of the buildings and severe angles of the streets.

In contrast, when I’m in the country, I become softer, rounder, more sensual, more organic and complex. When surrounded by nature, my writing projects seem to begin and end more naturally, reflecting the gently sloping hills and waving trees.

In some ways, if I’m not in the country, I don’t feel like I’m really me. It’s there that I relax and open up, become less intellectual, more spiritual and reconnect with whatever it is that I lose sight of in the city.

Which explains why, every so often, armed with a cup of coffee, I play hooky and head out of town, to experience the comforting presence of trees. While there, driving this way and that down the curving roads, it feels as if the trees are brushing the air and me clean, as if, like green filters, they’re scrubbing away all that’s unnecessary and not me.

There’s something about the strong, silent presence of trees that makes me feel like I don’t have to be doing anything. Sure-footed and undemanding, trees provide a strong consistency. Their branches have a muffling effect on sounds and my thoughts, setting me above my concept of myself; their overhead canopy feels soothing.

Reaching high while digging deep, trees solve so much with their calm presence, as they march up the side of a hill, anchor the edge of a field or just stand there skirted by thick undergrowth.

Deep rooted and stalwart, they encompass me with their arms and bless me with their indifference to life’s successes and failures. “Everything is all right,” they seem to be saying, while swaying in life’s breeze.

Redhead

A few weeks ago, I went to Oregon Home magazine’s 10-year anniversary party.

“I thought you’d have red hair!” Sheila, the editor, said upon seeing me for the first time.

Until that moment, although I’d been writing for Sheila for several years, we’d never actually met.

“Wait. Let me get used to your face,” she said while forming a frame with her hands.

I’d seen photos of Sheila in the magazine, so had some idea of what to expect although, in person, she is even more attractive, more exotic looking. She also has a calming presence, a result, perhaps, of having to herd a lot of freelance writers, including me.

“I wasn’t expecting brunette,” she shouted over the sound of a man singing Jimmy Buffett songs and the chatter of the other partiers.

The odd thing was, until two days prior, I had been a redhead. Then, in one of those oh-what-the-heck moods, I had my hair stylist apply a heavy dose of dark hair color onto my locks. In addition to being an editor, could Sheila also be psychic?

Of all my editors, Sheila is one of my favorites. At the party she not only acknowledged I wrote for other publications before encouraging me to “Keep sending ME your good essays,” but she also made sure I got something to eat and asked if I’d found a writer’s getaway cabin. (No, not yet.) After talking with me for several minutes, she let me go with a “Well, no doubt you’re tired,” a response to an earlier email of mine in which I said I might not make the party because, depending on how the work day went, I sometimes turned into a pumpkin by 7 p.m.

As I headed out of the noisy party room and into the dark night, making my way down a rain-glistened city sidewalk to my car, for the first time I realized something that, in the flurry of making a living, I sometimes forget ― that, in addition to being a coworker, an editor can also be a friend.