Writing is the one thing that always helps me process the experiences life brings. Writing has also been fraught most of my life for various reasons (a story which is out of the scope of today’s missive), but letters have been a staple for me, nonthreatening. Nothing comes up as a barrier to writing letters, except thinking about my audience and what I want or need to say.

Today I am writing a letter to mark an occasion, and it is to whomever may consider themselves worthy of my love, which, to my point of view, encompasses all, though there are degrees of love and nuances of love. To my point of view, everything I come into contact with is part of my garden and in some way under my care. This is not frippery but a state I’ve arrived at after much wandering in the world, and many experiences.

I’m writing today because I’m saying goodbye to so much in my current life, and embarking on a new adventure in a new place, far enough away from my intimate circle to effectively cut me off and make me rely upon myself wholly, or upon strangers as the case may require.

There have been many goodbyes the past few months. My father-in-law last September, and my darling Lucy-fur just over a month ago being two big ones. Life is always changing, but sometimes the change seems unrelenting. Today I went to my beloved Thacher Park to say goodbye to one of my oldest and most constant friends. A tree. And if I’d written this twenty years ago, when we were first making our acquaintance, anyone (including myself) would have said I was fanciful at best and crazy more like.

Today I went specifically to say goodbye to this beautiful friend of mine. I have not been visiting Thacher, except a couple other times, since Lucy died. So much physically calling my attention and also it’s very sad and lonely without my good girl with me. But I move in two days, and I may not be back to Thacher for a long time, if ever, so the trip was needed.

I met this tree back in 2002-2003, after dropping out of law school and floundering for any purchase in this world. The tower of my life had come crashing down and I went to the woods, because Nature is hands down the best succor for any malaise. Take your human-made distractions and entertainments and shove ’em, I say. Give me Nature any day.

If you know me at all, you know that twenty years has seen a lot of darkness and struggle to get to the light, and my tree friend has been hugged, cried upon, kissed, and communed with for many quiet moments and minutes, week after week and year after year. It stands just off a main trail, so our visits are often fleeting, paced according to human traffic. Today was a Thursday, in the late morning, and no one was around, so our time was open and free, and I told my friend I was leaving and may not return. This broke open a torrent inside of me, one that has been held back for too long. Since Lucy I’ve been so busy with work and the physical labor involved in moving (the past two weeks I’ve been Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables, trying to get this new place comfortable enough to call home). I haven’t been fully processing Lucy’s death and really, the whole loss involved with moving from my family and an area I’ve lived in for the past twenty-two years.

So I cried and poured out my thoughts and visions to this tree who has been my friend for almost as long as I’ve lived here. I told it I was moving away, far enough away that I might not be back again, and I cried. I told it that I would be living next to the chestnut tree, in ___. I told it this a few times, picturing the place, and I could feel it mean something. It meant something to say I would be next to that chestnut. Then I thanked it for being my friend all these years, and for talking to me, for telling me things like the darkness is essential–that the roots of a tree reach deep into the darkness for strength and nourishment, and to never be ashamed of the darkness for it is essential. I thanked it, and cried, releasing the grief I’d been holding in.

Then I felt something: an energy entered me and filled me up, and I knew the tree was sending me strength and love. It filled me, and when I stepped back minutes later it did it again–it sent me that energy and told me I was a tree friend, and when I thought of it, it would be there.

I had to be moving on, and finally walked away down the trail, but I tell you: I went a half mile away and thought of my tree, and it was there. Not only was it there but it sent me a burst of light and I felt the sun shine upon my head and I swear it gave me nourishment. Then I knew that the tree, my friend, had included me in its Network.

Later, much later, I was heading home after errands and more goodbyes, on a road I’ve not traveled more than once or twice. I noticed the four-lane highway was going to become two lanes and made to get over, but a car was there, coming up on me but hesitating just a bit. I saw it once, twice, then I started speeding up to get over and it sped up…the merge was coming and I was like fine, I’m going, moving over, and it kept speeding up moving over, until the guy (I could see him now, a young Black man with medium-length dreds) passed by going over the double line, then coming back into the lane in front of me and slowing way down. So I’m talking to him of course, telling him what a fucking idiot he is. Then telling him fine, just show everyone what an asshole you are. We both continue into town, and he’s in front of me the whole time. Looks like he’s going to pass the grocery store, but when I turn on my left signal and get into the middle lane, he just drifts over into the middle lane in front of me (no signal), and proceeds to turn into the grocery store lot. Oh fine then. Let’s have a little more.

He goes off toward the back and I continue in the front and park. See him walking toward the building and I walk fast to get in front of him but he’s only a few feet behind me. I flip him off surreptitiously but obviously, my finger pointing downward by my side at him as I enter the automatic doors, which do not open as fast as I would like and I almost push into the second one. Nothing happens in the store, but when I’m walking out I see through the window he’s standing by his car in the parking lot. He sees me and flips me the bird. He sees me see him and smiles and flips the bird again as I exit the building, and I just smile, nodding at him. He gets into his car and drives toward me to leave, and I walk up to his car, tinted windows all rolled up. I nod my chin at him and start talking, I don’t know what I was saying but along the lines of why do we have to be such assholes to one another? He rolled down his window and even opened the door at some point in our encounter. We both rehashed our versions of what happened a few times and slowly realized we both were in the wrong, and at some point he said, did you have a bad day, and I looked up to the heavens and the tears started and I said a bad month! My dog died. He said I had a lot of people died, I know. Life is hard. Those weren’t his exact words but the jist. I said please please can we just be better people? And he said yeah, both of us be better people. We were both still some mad, each thought we had the right to feel the way we did, but we also understood this moment. The moment when two friends agree to let it drop and go on playing. I reached out my hand and he reached his. We shook firmly and warmly–a good handshake–and I turned away. He said, I hope you have a better day.

Later, making dinner for myself for the first time in days, I thought about our encounter, how we both were right in our own ways, and both wrong, too. Both behaving badly without thought for the other. I felt his hand in mine again and sent him love.

Today I’m writing because I’m leaving behind what I’ve known for so long, and nothing will ever be the same. Nothing is ever the same, really. We just build up our worlds to defend against change, so when big changes come it shocks us. But nothing is ever the same, moment to moment.

A network lies beneath all the change, though. The network is love. I intend to build this network wherever I go, whomever I meet, until I’m gone from this life.