Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: Climbing Trees & A Guardian List of Top 10 Books About Trees

This bunch of tree trunks huddling together reminds me of my younger days when I was a tree climber. I remember looking over the rooftops of the houses on my block in Brooklyn, watching the world go by. There was something so peaceful about being so high in the air. I could feel the breeze blowing gently through my hair and I smiled as I sniffed the scent of the flowers that the gentle wind lifted into the air. But there is more to this picture than my memories.

I can imagine each seedling starting its life, reaching up as it grew and finding others like itself nearby. They all matured and found themselves so close that each became more than an individual, all of them connecting like a family that bonded together.

It has me wondering why we humans have so  much trouble connecting with other humans. We may experience differences but we are still of the same branch, so to speak. We are all people. I hope we can embrace our connection and climb up and away from whatever keeps our family at odds.

©2020 Ferida Wolff for SeniorWomen.com

 https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Ferida+Wolff&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

A Weed Is a Seed: Ferida Wolff, Janet Pedersen: 9780395722916: Amazon.com: Books.

Guardian List

1. Howards End by EM Forster

I learned from reading this book at school that novels can work through recurrent phrases and enigmatic images. Here, on the very first page, is the wych elm. I had no idea then what a wych elm might be, but I knew that this strange tree, with the pig’s teeth embedded in its trunk, somehow possessed qualities that were beyond the reach of the car-owning colonialists who thought they owned it.

2. Meetings With Remarkable Trees by Thomas Pakenham
The shock of witnessing beeches in the garden crash to the ground in a January storm sent Pakenham in search of surviving trees. His wonderful modern pilgrimage to ancient trees includes the gigantic Douglas fir at the Hermitage in Dunkeld and the weird, weeping beech at Knap Hill near Woking, which is “Britain’s dottiest tree”. Pakenham even helped to uncover trees long thought lost, such as the giant yew immortalised by Wordsworth as the “pride of Lorton Vale”.

3. The Dead by James Joyce
This short story, with more distilled in its rich pages than many a lengthy novel, mostly takes place indoors, at a family Christmas party in Dublin, which makes the later evocation of a young man waiting through a cold night beneath a tree all the more haunting. Michael Furey stands for all lost lovers, yearning for what’s out of reach under the shade of a tree.