From Copper Beech to English Chintz

My childhood bedroom had a wide-bottom, maple rocker with flat arms and faded, well-used cushions of pink and blue. In it, I looked out a colonial window to a brick walk, Prospect Street, and the Davidson’s front porch. But the main attraction was a copper beech whose golden spring leaves would become summer’s green, as gray branches filtered the setting sun and blended dark caves into the night. Comfort, quiet, peace, time to reflect, friendship were words I didn’t think of at eight or even at thirteen. But still, the beech was my companion through spring rain, summer cicadas, autumn’s dying, and then snow.

Where I write at my computer now, more than a half-century later, I’m near a north bedroom window of tall panes of sliding, screened glass. A small wooden desk fronts the window and looks directly out on an English Chintz—an Indian species of tree new to me. The trunk of the chintz is ten inches around with branches spreading six feet out and above the ground floor. Small leaves flirt with a regular breeze, giving me both privacy and an airy view. I feel peaceful looking out. A Myna bird often perches on the wall behind with a song of various verses. Comfort and calm, twin feelings arrive—though it’s the friendship I especially feel—a bond between the tree and me that in the mode of feelings is a distant relative to the copper beech.

My realization is, "All nature may be imbued with human feelings that reflect back to the giver, so there is both giving and receiving in natural harmony between humanity and nature."