“There used to be a huge tree next to that house!” Simon remarked as they drove by. He noticed this sort of thing. In fact, he would notice if you put a book back in his bookcase and did not push it quite all the way in. These things just jumped at him. But the tree, next to the tiny house they had passed hundreds of times when they lived in this town, that tree was more important than a book. It had witnessed things. 

Simon was sound of mind, thank you very much. It’s just that he perceived the world from a unique perspective. He could see dimensions; not with his eyes, but with his mind. He tried to explain this on many occasions, carefully wording his odd take on things so as to not appear like a freak or scare people away. He gave up after a while, recognizing that his ability to see “beyond” was a gift too sacred to reduce to words or to disclose fully. It had to be experienced. Those few who “got it” did not need explanation. Those who did not, just did not. We each have our gifts. He resorted to a simple quip: “I am weird, but harmless!” he’d say, laughing.  

Trees spoke to him, especially Beech, but any old tree really or any grove. The grandfather trees could project their own thoughts with ease. The saplings required the joint voices of their siblings, so their thoughts could echo loud enough to reach the human heart. And then, very few heard them, or realized that they did. Simon was certain this was merely a lost ability; a lost awareness. For him, the thoughts of trees reached the very center of his body, smack in the middle of his heart and rib cage, like a root gently piercing its way in as a bird coming home to its nest. It so, so felt like home when the trees spoke to Simon; like joining with a soulmate. Often, it brought him to tears.  

There was that time he walked on a wooded path by a river, in Scotland. This, in fact, is where his kinship with the trees was revealed so vividly that he could no longer dismiss the earlier glimpses of it. It pulled him. He walked and suddenly felt compelled to lift his eyes to the right.

There, amidst younger trees, all of them Beech, stood an old and wise one. Simon walked over, placed his hand on the bark -which he now calls skin – then, turned and rested his back against the old, gnarly, yet smooth silver trunk. He closed his eyes. The world disappeared. In a millisecond, he was inside the tree, embraced, gently. He received a message, not through a voice in his ears, but directly, as though it had been received by every one of his cells. “Welcome home. Welcome back. We love you.”  

Only a few short minutes had passed, but as Simon walked away, he was overwhelmed with the “memory” of a grandfatherly figure. And the grandfather was the tree. And Simon stood in the middle of the path, weeping. He later remembered an extraordinary light surrounding him as he stood there, though it was raining that day.  

He visited his tree friend again at the end of the week, to say goodbye before packing his bags to return to the United States. “Tell me your name? What shall I call you?” he asked, instinctively. He received a name, much as he had received the previous message, and learned that when you ask a tree for its name, it chooses a name that is for you alone to use. Another person will be told a different name. It is like a password. When you speak your tree’s name, it knows it is you speaking, even from an ocean away. It is a secret, a pact, never to be broken.  

These images danced on the backdrop of his mind again, as they often did when a chance encounter with a tree opened those hidden dimensions to him. This felt at once comforting and isolating. The modern world was not Simon’s natural home. He just knew it.  

The connection was never lost. Even a long-gone tree left an imprint. Simon had seen the tree by the little house grow from a two-foot high twig to a majestic being. It was gone now, with all its memories. And this is precisely what this world was about for him: a landscape of memories.