The Feel Good Way

I grew up in a forest. So for a long time, trees were just… furniture. Big, green furniture that happened to make shade.

That’s it. That’s all they were to me.

Shade when it was too hot. Coolness when I needed it. A bit of damp air when everything else felt dry and dusty. Useful, sure. But not much more than that. When you grow up surrounded by something, you stop really seeing it. It just becomes the background of your life.

People change though. And somewhere along the way, I started to notice trees. Really notice them.

The size of them. The way they sway in the wind like they’re having a conversation with the sky. How they survive storm after storm, year after year, just standing there taking whatever the weather throws at them.

I started noticing the small things too. How sunlight filters through the leaves, all soft and broken up, like it’s been poured through lace. How you can sit underneath a big tree and still feel a little tingle of sun on your skin, just enough to feel it, not enough to burn. That perfect in-between.

The sound of leaves in the wind. And that one sharp crack, when a branch gives up during a storm.

Trees.

They can’t walk. They can’t talk. And somehow, I found out they have power anyway. A kind of quiet energy that just sits there, patiently, whether you notice it or not.

I found this out properly when our new neighbours started cutting theirs down.

One giant oak after another. Trees older than 80 years, gone. I thought it would be one, maybe two. I lost count after that. Every time one came down, I felt it, a real jolt, right in my chest. These enormous, patient giants, just gone, to make room for a family house.

It hurt. A pain I didn’t see coming. It just arrived, uninvited, and sat there.

Where there used to be shade and rustling leaves, there’s just sky now. Blue and empty and bright. No shadow to soften it.

I didn’t know it until that moment, but I was connected to those trees. Energetically, quietly, without ever noticing. And now I was grieving them.

So I did the only thing that made sense. I started planning to plant more trees in my own garden.

I know new trees can’t replace the ones that were taken away, driven off on the back of a truck like prisoners headed for some far-off camp. They can’t fill that emptiness. Nothing can, not really.

But I understand something now that I didn’t understand as a child surrounded by forest: trees give me energy. And these days, I’ll take all the energy I can get.