Trees are not just for toilet paper.

When I was very small, I loved picking flowers. I lived in desert environments until I was in the first grade, and when my family had a garden, it was usually vegetables or berries. I was drawn to the colors and soft shapes of flowers, so every time we even went to a park, I was the kid who was picking the dandelions and clover, and then presenting the weeds like some precious bouquet to someone that I loved. My grandparents lived in a very lush and verdant area, and their yard had even more flower-picking opportunities. One time, my grandfather postponed mowing the lawn so that my brother and I could fill our the little red wagon with dandelions while the stems were still long. We brought them back to my grandmother, who cheerfully let us fill drinking glass after drinking glass with the soft yellow blobs.

It took me a little longer to appreciate trees. Trees are, after all, more boring than flowers, and a little less approachable when you are under 4 feet tall. The first time that I really noticed trees was the year that I lived in Munich. I lived close to a park, but in an otherwise urban setting - a big first for me. One weekend, a friend and I traveled together to a small town in the Bavarian forest and went hiking. I was so overjoyed and uplifted to be amidst giant stands of evergreens that I hugged one and kissed it.

Even now, when I return to the Northwest, there is a sort of soaring feeling around my sternum when I see the patterns made on the foothills by the upwards-reaching fir trees. The prospect is at its most breathtaking in autumn, of course, when the interspersed alders shake their round golden leaves, creating lacy, aquinious patterns all along the mountain passes. But even in the winter I think it's beautiful.

I'm slowly falling in love with the naked oak tree outside my office window; it's the kind of majestic thing that makes me think of Hesse's statements in Goldmund and Narcissus about the repetition and echoing of forms in works of art. This oak tree is a splendid tree, but in its skeletal state, it could also be a tumbleweed or sagebush painted larger than life across my horizon.