My home is at the back of a broad, empty field, with a route in on humped and rutted dirt lanes to my fully treed one-eighth of an acre. A six-foot stone and brick wall with small rectangular openings and barbed wire across Y supports enclose my compound. The land’s original farmer family lives a bit of a distance away, in back of me up a small hill, and two plots behind me is a more newly built, large home with a two-generation family living there. Off at distances are an extended tin home settlement to one side, and on the other side a large, walled plantation of an absentee owner with a watchman and four dogs who I seldom see or hear—I am essentially alone. My choice of land was based on inner knowing soon confirmed by finding in the midst of the dried grasses and small stones a medium size pointer crystal, more aptly suited to being sold than held onto. Then on a smaller scale, being a woman who loves the ocean and beach, I noticed that in this semi-desert area there were many tiny, clam-shaped shells among the pebbles; I collected handfuls at first, feeling at home.
When the house construction was completed, I turned my attention to planting trees, as absolutely essential to me as having a house. There are now different varieties and different heights—from the first-planted neem that has grown higher than the first floor railed-in patio (in America, the second floor) to a one-foot neem in its third attempt to survive—unplanted and instead, a gift from a bird’s dropped seed. Then there is the wide, dense-leafed ficus that is cover for a large black bird with coppery wings that disappears within.
I am aware of trees’ visual and tactile aspects, their offerings of shade and oxygen, and their structures as perches for birds. I look at their heights and shapes, their trunks and bark, their design of branches, leaves, and flowers. I touch them, moving my hand up and down the bark. And in rain and wind I listen and watch at how weather changes them—their sounds, their movements—into dramatic performers.
As my trees have increased in number, now totaling twenty from plantings over five years, my attachment to them has grown. They are essential partners in my life as givers of comfort and company. This is not only at my home but also on the hill where Meher Baba’s tomb shrine is centered among the tamarind and the variegated orchards. I walk through on a favorite path at dusk, continuing to the far back edge of trees where I lie down on the dried leaves and contemplate: the visible parts of the trees, the sky, the clouds, and my being there.
My realization is, “Comfort and companionship come in many forms, especially when the heart is open and attentive to the surprise of an unexpected feeling of closeness with a part of nature.”