Carved anew
We started out on the Mohonk trail full of childish hope. Maybe, just maybe there would be a path of crumbs, we thought, a sign, something that would lead us to the tree in a mountainside full of trees. We walked for hours.
We noticed that most of the growth along the trail was quite young, from saplings to trees perhaps a foot in diameter. The older trees were set far back or lying in enormous pieces on the ground.
Fifty years. The tree they carved would have to be closer to 70 or 80 years old. A tree would grow and see quite a bit in that time — flooding rains, ice storms, winds, drought. The odds of us finding Bill and Cheryl’s tree looked worse as time went on.
Then we saw a tree that finally made me accept the fact that we’d be leaving there without the photo we wanted. On a relatively young beech were two sets of names. It was the only tree we found with anything carved on it at all. The interesting thing was that the letters had been growing with the tree and were starting to widen and callous, looking in some parts indistinguishable from the bark. The names were becoming the tree. The tree had made them part of itself.
I found a poetic justice in that. They, their young affection, that day, that moment, had become part of that whole forest.
Think of that tree, of those two kids climbing a mountain and opening their hearts for all the world to see, of the future that would bring both drought and abundance in both their children and their business, of their last years together and their utter devotion. Presenting love as a science reveals at best a profound lack of imagination. I have never seen a list work.
I asked my husband what he thought of this whole journey: the initials, whether there is a way to know, whether love can last any more without people going to experts for answers or techniques. In his usual Montanan manner, to respond to the question he took me out to our back yard and carved our initials into a tree.
Judith Acosta is a classically trained homeopath, a licensed psychotherapist and a crisis counselor. A resident of New Paltz, she has written several books and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, The Journal of Emergency Medical Services and other publications. She may be reached at www.wordsaremedicine or www.thenextosama.com.
