I was in my mid twenties, fresh off a messy breakup. My life's possessions fit inside a few milk crates that were stashed in a friend's closet. There was no place to stay, and no place to go. I scribbled a number of fresh reminders on scraps of paper about foolish love, about being young, about mistakes that are made over and over. I lost them as quickly as I wrote them, and ended up on a bus heading upstate where I stayed with my father for a month. The idea of leaving the city terrified me. If I left, something important would happen and I would surely miss it. Lightning can only be caught in a bottle if you are standing in the field where it happens.
In his little house perched on a lake, I chopped wood. I took long walks. I went to sleep early. I washed the dirty dishes without being asked to. I read some books. I stared out of windows and then I chopped more wood. At that time, there was a lot of talk about a man called Dr. Love, Leo Buscaglia. I never read anything by him but it was common knowledge that he encouraged people to hug trees. I was empty then. Lost in heartache and there were no big answers. This could all happen again, and I would not see it coming.
In the middle of all that wood chopping, I hugged a tree. It was ridiculous and I laughed openly as it went down, with a smirk plastered across my cheeks. It may have been a maple. It may have been an oak. It was too big to touch my hands on the other side. I can't say I felt anything back from the tree, except a vague understanding that it was alive. I was not hugging a rock. The magic did not happen. I did not feel better, just silly.
When a place to crash in New York presented itself I headed back, expecting the air to be a different color, or maybe all of the cool girls would have blue hair, or maybe there would be a new drug whispered about on street corners. Maybe there had been a knifing in a familiar place, or a favorite bar had closed. I wandered the lower east side, a cold wind in my hair, making mental notes about what had changed, which was almost nothing. A donut place had become a cajun dive and one of the waitresses was a classmate from art school. She waved me in from behind the front window and I perched at the counter, scarfing down seafood yaya and étouffée. The cook wandered over, all crooked teeth and tattoos.
"Man, you can eat." He said, with a nod of his head.
"I hugged a tree last week." I told him, proudly.
He shrugged his shoulders and strolled back to the deep fryer.
I repeated this confession to friends and strangers over the next months, hoping to explain that I had changed a little, that I had done something I would never have done last year or any year before this one. I was trying to explain that I had surprised myself, and that maybe they could surprise themselves in some way. Hugging trees became shorthand for making wishes, not just throwing pennies in fountains but risking ridicule in the name of your deepest nameless needs.
Last week I took a picture of my favorite tree in Moscow. It leans. Its roots are a carbuncled face. I sigh every time I pass it, knowing that one great wind could down it. Laying on the ground like a beached whale, it would be cut into chunks and carted off.
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