I have been fascinated by the nakedness of trees lately.
People say that trees look depressing in winter, but I think they are beautiful. How could anyone not? To love is to love unconditionally, and that means through it all. Through storm and light. Within and throughout all seasons, not just bloom.
I was on the phone with [REDACTED] a few days ago, sitting on my bed and looking out my cherished window. My apartment building’s backyard has a lot of foliage, but one tree in particular, overtakes the rest. I watch it all the time, as I was at that moment. It had snowed the night before, and I said “the view is so wonderful today.” She asked to see, and was immediately concerned: “the trees look sad, and anyone who finds joy in looking at them in that stage, is too, sad.”
But why? Beauty, just like love (should be), is unequivocal, isn’t it? I have seen this one specific tree through three seasons now.
Summer, when I just moved in—it was green, and beautiful. Autumn, as the months went by—it was orange, and beautiful. Winter, as the tide blew over—it was barren, and beautiful.
The trees change—they grow, they shed, and they grow again. It is a cycle. They are still always trees. There is beauty in birth and beauty in change. Or, there should be. Why do people pick and choose seasons where they love, where they see beauty—they harbor fascination with the pink cherry blossoms, dismiss the bones of elms in blue winters—and dedicate months to love and then months to turn the love into pity and disgust. Why do they let the beauty—that was just there—become unfindable?
“No one should think that’s beautiful.” It’s funny, because a few people have seen me through many grey spaces—the darkest of shades, and then the lighter, and they have been by my side always, but tended to only notice the black and white, even then. Even now.
I look at the trees, and think they are beautiful. Even without leaves. Even when they look a little bit sad.
Perhaps I am drawn to the naked trees, because of how I have felt like them before. Season by season, emotion by emotion, change by change. Vulnerable in existence. The joy in summer, the anxiety of fall, and the loss of winter. A repeat, a mishap, a mixture of these, sometimes an absence of all. I understand sadness and I understand pain—I have a second sense for it. Even though I have grown and changed myself, become better by miles—the crux of it still remains within my soul, and I think it always will, as a memoir to my old self.
For a long time, I held on to it tightly—as if it was the only thing that made the struggle worthy. And then came resentment. I wanted it gone—I wanted it to disappear from my vision, just as I used to wish for myself. Now, I am indifferent. It exists, and I exist, and it is a symbol of my resilience, beyond anything else. And in this bold reclamation, I feel my connection to the tree in my backyard. To the tree on the street over. To the tree in the next Borough. To all the trees, everywhere, right now.
I grew up in a place that only saw one season- summer. Just the barest glimpse of winter, and we would be right back to the heat. As years passed, our climate changed, albeit with human intervention. The winter would get longer, but the summer would get worse, too. I think I had tuned myself to this strange weather; temperature ticking an erratic, uncomfortable melody through the broken strings on the instrument of my existence. I was stuck—miserable and so, so, unappreciative. I do not blame myself for this. It is hard to see the beauty in life, when one is buried so deep in misery. But I realized that, as I got better, as I became alive again, I started noticing beauty more and more.
Now I notice beauty in everything, because I see nature everywhere, and so I see it all the time. I see a tree, every day, as I wake and as I sleep. I see real seasons, for the first time, through it. It makes me wonder, can humans not be the same? Can I, not be the same?
“Everything eats and is eaten. Time is fed.” - Adrianne Lenker
Our time feeds on change, on the process of becoming and unbecoming. My tree is consumed by it, dropping its protective coat of leaves, regrowing them, doing this again and again. I, too, have gone through this cycle of loss and renewal—and just as the tree will repeat itself next year, I am sure that I will too. But in different ways. No leaves grow back the exact same as their predecessors, and neither will any part of me. There is always more to learn, always more beauty to find.
I want to surrender to this inevitability. Everything is both giving and taking, both consuming and being consumed. The past version of me was eaten by time, but in doing so, it nourished the person I am now.
There is so much beauty, but there is also so much pain, and the two sides overlap with one another. This has been true for all of time. The world is simultaneously harsh and lovely, rugged and soft. The bark of the tree is painful for a human to rest against. But lichen builds its home there. Beavers strip and eat its dead pieces.
There is no place for black and white, or even grey. I argue that everything is multicolored. Joy and pain coexist, growth and decay coexist, my own suffering and flourishing coexist—the understanding that the cycle always continues, that balance is always restored—it makes me feel at peace. I do think humans, and I, can be the same as the trees. After all, haven’t we all been naked at some point in time? I recognize it. I just need to give myself the same grace. Nature is indifferent to circumstance. The tree sheds and regrows, standing tall the whole time. No resistance. And in that, great resilience, I will grow my own—if I can love the tree throughout all of its seasons, then I must be capable of loving myself through all of my seasons too. My seasons have not yet built a perfect pattern, but they are starting too. It feels comforting. It feels like growing up. It feels like being awake and alive.
I watch my tree, and it watches me. Come spring, it will blossom, and it will bring me shade again.
I wonder what it will see in me?