What is your tree story?
We all have at one time in our life experienced a tree in one way or another.
We climbed trees with our friends seeing who could climb the highest, built a tree house that was our refuge, walked through a cool dense forest in the springtime, plucked a plump red apple off a tree, speculated on what kind of a tree we would be.
On a hot summer evening, did you run to a tree for safe base when you played tag?
Somewhere within you there is a tree story.
Just as the rings of a tree embody the stories of the tree, so too we carry the stories of trees. These stories inspire us to renew our sense of wonder. They connect us to one another through shared experiences as they deepen our understanding to our connection with nature.
Click on the links below to read the stories of others—
This page has the following sub pages.
- Cattail Stalks
- At the Fire
- Forest of Oma
- For my Sister Marilyn
- She dubbed the tree “hope”
- Two Trees, Still Standing
- Living Tree
- Time to listen
- The Shed
- Juicy mulberries
- Hard to “let go”
- There is no living…
- Our love began …
- I am the tree…
- Becoming
- From loss is knowing
- I was diagnosed…
- Eglé
- Dark Green Anger Arising
- Deep Winter
- When I was little…
- Rowan
- Five-Finger Tree
- Trees Have Names
- Shovels & Wheelbarrows
- Up in a Tree
- Earthy tree
- A hurricane…
- Princé
- Gaia
- Some kind of magic
- Job Interview
- otto peasle’s prairie home
- puke berry
- Merton’s advice
- Childhood Memories
- Der Maibaum
- I sang and cloud surfed…
- Tree part of the stone
- Peach Tree
- To A Fallen Tree
- Walk along the creek
- Analogy of the oak
- The Good Red Road
- Music of trees
- Tree I slept beneath
- Listening
- The Giving Plant
- A valued friend
- Great Oak Tree
- Dance to the wind
- My Father’s People
- Moonlight
- Heartbeat
- Tree friends
- John’s Tree Story
- Francie’s Tree Story
- Linda’s tree story
- Jane’s tree story
- Leslie’s First Tree Story
- David’s tree story
- Walk Tall
- Haiku Garden Tales
- White Oak
- The Heather Tree
- I found my tree, beside a stream
- The Dance of the Mountain Trees
- My tree story.
- Primordial Forest
Excerpts from “Grandpa Stories”
Short stories written by Linda Marie Barrett
(Submitted in honor of my grandfather Michael R. Barrett, who arrived in the United States of America from Castleisland, Ireland – via Liverpool, England, UK, — aboard the ship Cedric on
February 28, 1920.)
Shovels & Wheelbarrows
-Part 1
Certainty knows no bounds when it comes to understanding my grandfather’s time with the soil, his shovels and his wheelbarrow.
This was indeed a man who handled his shovels as if a prize on a shelf, a badge to shine on his shirt. His wheelbarrow was a piece of magic, the size of which seemed far too large for its travel in my grandpa’s car trunk. But those gleaming shovels, clean and free of dirt, and that larger than life wheelbarrow, seemed to go with him everywhere he and his Olds ’98 traveled.
I imagine that coming from Ireland, from a land of rocks, and hills, and farming – with green misty views reaching to infinity – that he grew up with the land in him. So it shouldn’t surprise me to wake in the morning (usually some Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m.) to find my grandpa in our backyard. He would be planting his second –or perhaps even third– blue spruce (another thing I am certain was his favorites).
My brothers and I would hear his wide deep digging shovel grip the gravely dirt – then would come the drag of soil to the surface – the thud of the earth meeting the mound he had formed. We would lie in our beds half awake, half asleep, knowing our grandfather was doing the thing he was most alive doing…digging in the land. More importantly, our backyard!
My Dad and Saturday Mornings
-Part 2
Now mind you, it’s a great thing to be so connected to the land, but it’s another not to tell someone you’re feeling connected to “their land,” “their yard.” Oh yes, of this I am also certain — there were days that my dad would have loved a notice posted of:
“INTENT TO EXCAVATE YOUR YARD FOR TREE PLANTING.”
Collectively us kid’s, we would know our time of half-awake and half-asleep had ended — and when fully awake had arrived — when we heard my parent’s bedroom door open. First would come the light step of my mom in the hallway heading towards the kitchen, minutes later we could smell the sweetness of cinnamon rolls and icing baking. I am convinced now that this was my mom’s way of signaling a kind of “chore-warning.”
Confirmation of this alert was given when my parent’s bedroom door opened for the second time. My dad had a way of opening their bedroom door – which pushed a gust of wind under each of ours – along with a way of stepping out into the hallway that declared a litany of chores that lie ahead on any given Saturday.
Door Opening Sounds
-Part 3
There existed several proclamations within each of my dad’s door opening wind gust:
1. The “let’s clean the garage” – door opening sound
(of which the stories are so great in length & quantity – they would best be left for another day and another book entirely of its own).
2. The arbitrary, “let’s all wake-up cause it feels too late to still be asleep” – door opening sound.
3. The “you stayed out to late last night, so get your butt outta bed” – door opening sound.
4. The “let’s have a party and invite lots of people – so get up and clean every dish & glass, mow the lawn, wash the floors, clean the garage, and oh by the way, let’s redecorate” – door opening sound.
and of course…
5. The gust of wind and sound combination of: “your grandpa’s here planting trees and I didn’t know anything about it…but you’re all gonna get up and help – before he digs up all the trees we’ve already planted and moves them” – door opening sound.
Us
– Final part
Each of these particular door-opening signals would be followed up with the triple knock on each of our bedroom doors and the somewhat military-ish delivery of “rise – n – shine.”
Indeed as time has passed, the years have provided me with rich recollections. There were important messages there for me – this was a lesson in learning about my grandfather’s time, which created my father’s time, which in turn r-e-i-n-c-a-r-n-a-t-e-d into something totally different in each of my five brothers and my own time. And in the end, regardless of our bodies calling for sleep, it was tree-planting time; for my grandfather, with my grandfather, about his love of shovels & wheelbarrows, of trees, the soil, and most importantly us.
Yes, of this I am truly certain, it was about his time – with us.
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When I was 8 years old..that was 1958…a very significant year for many folks…I would sneak out of bed in the mild weather, when my folks were asleep and creep out to a large spruce that was in the very back of our property.
In there I had a nest of blankets and that’s where I kept all of my totems and special things. I’d sleep out there and at the first light sneak back to my bed.
In that place I was safe and I truly became the “Indian” that I believed myself to be. Out there…my blonde hair was gone and I had long dark hair and brown skin. The spruce make that so.
One night while I was out there, I saw a light coming closer and thought…”uhoh…dad is coming to find me” As the light came closer…it wasn’t dad at all, but a Native man with a torch. I lifted the heavy branch and looked out at his glowing presence.
“child…I am your great grandfather and I have an important message for you”. I wasn’t afraid…I was comforted by him. “I will always be with you in everything you do…You have a huge future ahead of you with an important path to walk. It’s called the Good Red Road and if you stumble or falter or come up against trials that you can’t imagine over coming….remember this my child….You are Up to the Task.”
With that he faded. I slept with a smile that night. And all through my life, now 60 years, I’ve always remembered his words. They’ve brought me back from death…. and beyond.
It was the tree that I slept beneath that was the energy that facilitated that night…love and peace…lynnann
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