Me and trees . . .  I’ve had “a thing” for trees for a long, long time.  As a child, I remember sitting beneath the young silver maples in our yard, which seemed enormous at the time listening to the trees “talk.”

Hildegard of Bingen, one of the Rhineland mystics and a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, encourages us to be “strong like a tree,”  according to Matthew Fox in Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times.

I’ve found strength in trees in times of joy, after setbacks, and when setting off on a new course. Here are a few of my most beloved tree friends . . .

My redwood neighbor in Tacoma’s Wright Park:

A mighty giant reaching for the sky in North America’s only rainforest on the Olympic Penninsula.

With Flat Stanley at the base of an 1,000 year old Sitka Spruce . . . that would be 1015 A.D. if the sign marker was new, which it’s not.

On a wintry Illinois day, “being tree.”

I’m with Hildegard.  “Be strong like a tree.”