In Which I Fall in Love With Trees
In 1968 my parents had a house built in a small mountain village above Beirut in Lebanon. They chose a plot of land that was located on a steep, stone terraced hillside where old olive trees grew. Many of the trees were three or four hundred years old, beautifully gnarled and twisted by time. The house itself was built into the hillside on the site of an old disused stone quarry. This meant that none of the olive trees growing on the land had to be removed to build the house, which pleased my parents. Though neither one of them grew up in the Middle East, my parents understood how precious olive trees are, especially the venerable elders of the species.
In addition to the olive trees, there were almond and fig trees growing on their four dunams of land. A dunam is, historically, an Ottoman measure for the land a pair of oxen could plow in a day. This measurement of land is still used in the Middle East today. For those of you not familiar with the term, four dunams equals an acre, or four thousand square meters.
On a cold January day my parents brought their infant daughter home from the hospital to their new house, with its splendid view of the mountainside below and the city of Beirut hugging the coast of the Mediterranean sea. And so I grew up surrounded by olive trees that became my friends and play places. Once I was old enough I climbed them; and fell out of them. I hid treasures in the nooks and crannies that I found in the ancient trunks.
There were also almond trees on the land that produced froths of soft pink blossoms in the spring. I would try to sneak a few of the green almonds to eat, knowing that my disapproving mother would tell me that I would get the collywobbles if I ate the unripe nuts. Once they were ripe, the gardener and my mother would pick the almonds and Mum dried them by laying them out on old sheets in the sun. When they were dried enough – they had to rattle when shaken – the nuts were cracked and stored the in jars. They were an essential part of Mum’s Christmas cake recipe.
Then there were the fig trees. These, unfortunately, did get damaged when the house was built, but fig trees are hardy, and seemingly overnight they were back. One of them grew so massive that my parents invited the villagers to come and pick as much fruit as they wanted. I can still remember the smell of ripening figs, the buzz of the wasps that were attracted to the sweet fruit, and the voices of the villagers as they picked away. My mother picked as many figs as she could store, drying them on flat baskets in the sun on the veranda.
Below our house, stone terraces of olive trees descended into the valley below. Regularly, in the warmer months, my family and several other English-speaking families, including that of my godmother, would tramp down the valley to have a communal picnic under the olive trees. The trees that we would sit under were even older than the ones on my parent’s land. They had hollow centers, and we children had a wonderful time playing house inside them, climbing up high as we could, and announcing to all who would listen that we could see the whole world from our perches up in the branches.
Some years later we had similar picnics in olive groves in Cyprus. A few of the people who came to these picnics were refugees from Lebanon, as we were. My godmother and her family were always there, and an American journalist friend who we first met in Lebanon came as well. Then there were the English and Cypriot families we had made friends with when we left Lebanon and made Cyprus our home.
Though we were a little older, my godmother’s son and I still climbed the olive trees, and we still tried to out-climb each other. We were not the innocent little children we had once been - the Lebanese Civil War had seen to that - but the olive trees still drew us to them. They were a reminder of a sweet time and a beautiful place that we had loved and that was now lost to us. I think we knew, young as we were, that we would never be going back to our little mountain village, and we would never be as free as those children had been either.
Many many years later my adult self, my husband, and my little daughter drove across the United States from Virginia to start anew in Oregon. Now long after we got settled in our new home, I started to explore our valley and I discovered that the most beautiful trees grow here; trees that have stood here for generations. They are not as old as my beloved olive trees, but these trees have witnessed great changes and have stories embedded in their bark. With every passing year I have grown to love these trees more and more. I have hugged and leaned on them when I have been heart sore and lost.
They have helped me connect with the natural world in a special way, and for the first time in my adult life, I feel safe enough to put down roots into the soil of the ten acres of land that Brian and I belong to. I have never felt this way about a place before; not on the half acre on which our first house stood, nor on the sixty-five countryside acres on which our Virginia farmhouse had been built. It is a strange feeling, but a delightful one as well. For the first time I am not just living on a piece of land, I am its guardian and I mean to tend it to the best of my ability.
Even the relatively young trees on our farm have now become dear friends. When one of our pines died and had to be cut down I was deeply distressed and insisted that we fill the empty place that it left behind as quickly as possible, which we did. For several years now I had tended the deodar we planted with great care, and have, on not a few occasions, been heard to encourage it (out loud) to grow, to reach for the sky.
Brian and I have also planted several fig trees on our land, which, in the late summer when the figs are ripe, smell just as the fig trees in Lebanon did all those summers ago. We also have a collection of small olive trees that we have planted in pots and that live on our veranda. I watch over these, fussing when the wind blows them over, and I’m constantly having arguments with Frank the scrub jay who likes to bury things in the soil around the little olive trees.
In the last year, as my health has improved, my connection with our land has deepened, and last summer a kernel of an idea came to me; a tree dream began to grow in my mind.
On a cold January day my parents brought their infant daughter home from the hospital to their new house, with its splendid view of the mountainside below and the city of Beirut hugging the coast of the Mediterranean sea. And so I grew up surrounded by olive trees that became my friends and play places. Once I was old enough I climbed them; and fell out of them. I hid treasures in the nooks and crannies that I found in the ancient trunks.
There were also almond trees on the land that produced froths of soft pink blossoms in the spring. I would try to sneak a few of the green almonds to eat, knowing that my disapproving mother would tell me that I would get the collywobbles if I ate the unripe nuts. Once they were ripe, the gardener and my mother would pick the almonds and Mum dried them by laying them out on old sheets in the sun. When they were dried enough – they had to rattle when shaken – the nuts were cracked and stored the in jars. They were an essential part of Mum’s Christmas cake recipe.
Then there were the fig trees. These, unfortunately, did get damaged when the house was built, but fig trees are hardy, and seemingly overnight they were back. One of them grew so massive that my parents invited the villagers to come and pick as much fruit as they wanted. I can still remember the smell of ripening figs, the buzz of the wasps that were attracted to the sweet fruit, and the voices of the villagers as they picked away. My mother picked as many figs as she could store, drying them on flat baskets in the sun on the veranda.
Some years later we had similar picnics in olive groves in Cyprus. A few of the people who came to these picnics were refugees from Lebanon, as we were. My godmother and her family were always there, and an American journalist friend who we first met in Lebanon came as well. Then there were the English and Cypriot families we had made friends with when we left Lebanon and made Cyprus our home.
Though we were a little older, my godmother’s son and I still climbed the olive trees, and we still tried to out-climb each other. We were not the innocent little children we had once been - the Lebanese Civil War had seen to that - but the olive trees still drew us to them. They were a reminder of a sweet time and a beautiful place that we had loved and that was now lost to us. I think we knew, young as we were, that we would never be going back to our little mountain village, and we would never be as free as those children had been either.
Many many years later my adult self, my husband, and my little daughter drove across the United States from Virginia to start anew in Oregon. Now long after we got settled in our new home, I started to explore our valley and I discovered that the most beautiful trees grow here; trees that have stood here for generations. They are not as old as my beloved olive trees, but these trees have witnessed great changes and have stories embedded in their bark. With every passing year I have grown to love these trees more and more. I have hugged and leaned on them when I have been heart sore and lost.
They have helped me connect with the natural world in a special way, and for the first time in my adult life, I feel safe enough to put down roots into the soil of the ten acres of land that Brian and I belong to. I have never felt this way about a place before; not on the half acre on which our first house stood, nor on the sixty-five countryside acres on which our Virginia farmhouse had been built. It is a strange feeling, but a delightful one as well. For the first time I am not just living on a piece of land, I am its guardian and I mean to tend it to the best of my ability.
Even the relatively young trees on our farm have now become dear friends. When one of our pines died and had to be cut down I was deeply distressed and insisted that we fill the empty place that it left behind as quickly as possible, which we did. For several years now I had tended the deodar we planted with great care, and have, on not a few occasions, been heard to encourage it (out loud) to grow, to reach for the sky.
Brian and I have also planted several fig trees on our land, which, in the late summer when the figs are ripe, smell just as the fig trees in Lebanon did all those summers ago. We also have a collection of small olive trees that we have planted in pots and that live on our veranda. I watch over these, fussing when the wind blows them over, and I’m constantly having arguments with Frank the scrub jay who likes to bury things in the soil around the little olive trees.
In the last year, as my health has improved, my connection with our land has deepened, and last summer a kernel of an idea came to me; a tree dream began to grow in my mind.
Header art by Shawn Macpherson
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