What I consider spring is in full swing here in Reno. The apple blossoms are out, the lilac bushes are green awaiting the burst of color in a couple of weeks and I saw a robin in the yard last week. That’s about a month earlier than in Northeast Wisconsin. Last week I went to a friend’s house to get some yucca plants for our yard. Right now our yard is more like a sage brush field but I would like to have some plants that won’t dry up and blow away in a year or two. We had a maple in our yard. We do not have an underground watering system and the tree just couldn’t get enough to drink. Last year it came down in a wind storm because it was over half dead. Yes, the colorful leaves in the fall reminded me of my childhood, but I think it’s cruel to put a maple in the sandy soil in our yard on the edge of the desert. The tree hugger in me wants to go back to the Big Woods like in Wisconsin. To show how much of a tree hugger I really am, the one thing I wanted to do in Las Vegas was touch a palm tree. You always have to be careful of what you touch in Sin City, but I wanted to feel one of the trees that don’t grow in Wisconsin. I didn’t care about the glitz of the Vegas strip or even seeing snow on Mount Charleston, I wanted to touch a palm tree. Our one night stay in Las Vegas didn’t go as planned, but because of that we ended up taking a bit of a walk and there just happen to be a palm tree along our path. I got to run my hands across the dry bark of the trunk while standing under the fronds that always make me think of illustrations from books by Dr. Seuss. The next thing I would like to cross off my bucket list is to visit the redwood forests of California. Reno is about a day’s drive from the redwood coast of California, about the same distance as we are from Las Vegas but in a different direction. I know I wouldn’t be able to fully hug one – that would take every one of my siblings and our spouses to get around some of the older trees – but I want to touch one. Part of it is the historian in me wanting to touch something that was alive when kings and queens ruled Europe. And, of course, the tree hugger in me wants to lay hands on the tallest trees in the world. Another part of it is that I just want to get out of the city and smell the forest again like when I was growing up in Wisconsin. I want to enjoy the randomness of a forest planted by nature, not planned by a landscaper. I want to feel the sunlight filtered through a canopy of leaves that can move and sway with a breeze. I want to be able to close my eyes and remember the joy of being surrounded by trees as a child in Wisconsin and thinking of the line from Tolkien – “not all those who wander are lost.”
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October 2021
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