The Trees Hold My Soul

Nature is supporting me as a highly sensitive person (HSP) when the world feels too awful

The injustice and cruelty of this moment in history press onto me mercilessly. I feel like I’m in a constant spiritual crisis.

I can’t stay inside with my phone. I need air. Sky. Wind.

Outside in my yard, my neighborhood, spring is slowly emerging from yet another round of snowflakes. The sun will melt them shortly after it crests the hill beyond the creek. I breathe. Lean into the rhythms of sunrise, seasons.

My feet press into the squishy solid earth. My heartbeats settle, too.

Our back hillside stretches up to the west. Shading itself, the hill has convinced these trees to wear their bare winter branches a bit longer. Their cousins across the valley are already trying on the crimsons and yellow greens of April. In woods, as in real estate: location, location, location.

I wonder about this single cluster of daffodils that has appeared every spring on the hillside. Did the home’s previous owner toss a spent flowerpot up the hill, only for bulbs to take root? Did some creature bury you here, a treasure brought from a distant territory? You are the only one of your kind in our neighborhood.

Every spring, I think I contemplate digging you up in the fall, moving you to the front yard where others can appreciate your hardy early color. Every autumn, I decide against it, preferring to let you be a pop of light against a dreary backdrop.

I look to my trees. Mine, because I embrace my connection with them. I do not own the trees, no matter what a deed printed on their sacrificed relative in dusty courthouse drawer might say.

The trees, the land, the daffodils? They are part of me. Mine, as much as my hands or my hair or my ideas. And I am theirs. The walls of my home create an illusion of separation, but they are no more than cell walls, separating parts of a unified whole. We are one.

The trees hold my soul.

They offer comfort. A sense of continuity. Hope for the future. Remembrance of the past. A witnessing of this moment.

And so, I go to them. My trees. My soul. Myself.

I am restored and fortified, nurtured for this moment.

Soon enough, I will forget. I’ll get absorbed in human doings and feel separate from nature. I’ll tune out the trees, just like we learn not to see our nose as we stare into space. We are mindless, forgeting that we are one whole.

I will remember myself back to my trees again soon. Until then, my loves, my gratitude to you for holding my soul.