There Is a Tree in the Woods

by Jennifer Houti

THERE IS A TREE IN THE WOODS

There is a tree in the woods. A live oak, grand and sprawling, seated on a small rise of dirt at a bend in a long gravel drive. From my front door to the base of the tree is a matter of two minutes. Of the half dozen live oaks in that thin strip of woods, it is the biggest and the oldest. 

We have walked past this tree in the woods for a few years now, my children and I, on our way to other things. What can stand so still amidst so many comings and goings? How can such a thing be unmoved by the bluster of hurricanes and the passage of busy generations? Does the fall of so many footsteps on that gravel drive not shift the ground just a little? It seems not, for the tree remains, as it ever was, roots deepening into the earth and branches putting forth little olive-green leaves.  

And yet for all its size and age, when I stop to stand beneath the tree, it does not seem aloof or unconcerned, small and fleeting though my worries be. It will outlive me and likely everyone I know, but in the moment that I am with the tree, the tree is also with me.  

The tree has not been particularly earnest. It knows things but has shown no urgency to impart them to me.  For months—a year?—I walked by it solely focused on the three small children walking with me. Or I passed the tree in a fog, ruminating over why I felt like I was unraveling—and maybe had been for a while. 

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the days passed and I continued to walk by the tree, I began to glance outside of myself. At night, I allowed myself to think the thoughts I had been running from for years. By day I grew increasingly desperate, desperate enough to seek answers, seek help in places I’d long given up on. I went to church. I joined a group of similarly-suffering souls and spoke those thoughts out loud. I reached out and was surprised to find many hands reaching back.

And there was the tree.  

I began to notice how broadly its canopy extended—how wide its reach. Whenever I turned the corner of the drive, it drew my eyes. I could appreciate now the light filtering through the leaves in a cheerful dance as old as time. The way Spanish moss drifted down in soft, quiet tangles.  And I wondered, if something could stand so still amidst so many coming and goings, so sure of itself, perhaps, could I?

There was the tree in the woods, telling me I was still strong.

There was the tree in the woods, sheltering me from the crueler elements.

There was the tree in the woods, showing me how to tangle up the ends of myself in the ends of other beings.

There was the tree in the woods, teaching me that no one ever falls alone.

There was the tree in the woods, pointing to something bigger when my faith was too small and weak to move beyond what I could see and touch.  

There was the tree in the woods, so grand and so near.

The tree did not care how I came to it.  When I was ready, the tree was simply there.  

It is still there now, whenever I need a glimpse, or to place my reverent hand against rough bark and feel its solid presence beneath my palm. 

There is a tree in the woods, just a short walk down a path that once was new, but now is mine.

JENNIFER HOUTI

Jennifer Houti is a single working mother living in Charleston, South Carolina with her young daughter and twin boys.  She is a lawyer by profession, a writer by calling, and a student by default.  Jennifer writes to put words to her own stirrings and longings, and to share them, in the hope that someone somewhere may breathe a little sigh of recognition.