We're Too Old Not To Learn to Just Sit Under a Tree

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Morning woods on our walk today

What we are missing while we’re speeding through life

Early this morning I took Mika, my doggo, for a walk. That was a gift; not only was the day soft and cool at 57 degrees, we were treated to plenty of fog at the top of our hill.

Lots of birdlife. In a morning like this, the fog further masks whatever minimal noise we have in this area. It’s one reason I chose the place. You can hear the woodpeckers, the thrumming and the depth of the unaccustomed silence, the whoosh of bird wings as Mika points at a flock in the high grass.

While I wanted Mika to pick up the pace so that I could get to work, I realized that her insistence on inspecting every single blade of grass was the whole point. I nearly missed watching a soft breeze move the great trees, the lively ghost shapes in the fog dancing past.

It’s perfect. Well, nearly.

What I wish I could stop is all the speeding. All our roads, as it’s all residential and full of kids, dogs and elderly folks, are from 15-25 mph. Everyone speeds, and I mean SPEEDS, as in double that and more.

Mika hates the big loud trucks that rumble by at 50 mph in reckless disregard of all the polite reminders. I’ve nearly been T-boned repeatedly as I pull out into a 20 mph stretch and someone barrelling over a blind hill has to come screaming to a stop.

WTF people.

Nearly every single one of those people ends up at the same lights and stop signs I do at precisely the same moment, their speeding having bought them nothing. You get it.

I used to speed, too. Looking at all the signs today and allowing Mika to choose the pace during a sweet early September walk brought back memories of what I missed once because I was so busy speeding along.

A tree. A big one, in fact, a great spreading walnut of 150 venerable years.

Deposit photos

In January of 2006, having had my love affair blow up in my face (he accused me of sleeping around; I didn’t, he did, so it goes), I was looking for a house. I chose Lakewood, a lovely, heavily-treed neighborhood in Denver. The residents had done a fine job many years ago of planting and also saving some of the original spruce and pine giants.

I settled on a house that had been owned by Forest Service landscapers. True to their craft, they had planted the yard and left it easy to maintain, and even easier to love. Aspens out front, all kinds of green, back when Denver got enough rain to sustain them.

This is my house when I sold it in 2020;

My old home in Denver

What I really loved, however, was the massive, sweeping walnut which dominated the back yard. It shaded and cooled the south end of the house.

I bought a lovely wooden chair just to sit under that tree.

Somehow I never found the time.

I dutifully cleared the leaf and nut detritus of fall.

“I’ll get there,” I thought, looking at the chair as I tied off another trash bag of leaves.

Two years later, one spring, I waited for the walnut to leaf out.

It never did.

When I hired an arborist to help diagnose the problem, it was terrible news. My walnut had thousand canker disease. Thousands of dollars later, all the shade was gone, and I had a huge hole in my yard from the stump removal.

And a huge hole in my heart from the loss of the tree that I never took the time to sit beneath.

While I still had a lineup of tall pines and a stately blue spruce, it wasn’t the same. The local deer slept under the spruce, and owls took up residence in the pine branches over my bedroom.

But my walnut was gone.

Planted other trees, most didn’t work out. I planted one bright maple which survived, but it didn’t grow fast enough to give me shade.

I lived in that Lakewood house for another twelve years before the increasing heat, population growth and too many bad memories caused me to let go and move northwest, where I am surrounded by massive firs.

Here I have a gazebo and a deck, both of which look out over forest and the animals who wander by. For four years, I’ve told myself “I’ll get out there,” as I bought a fountain, nice chairs and decorations.

In four years I might have spent five hours in that gazebo. I bought this place because of the peace, the quiet, the gazebo.

When the hell am I going to enjoy it?

How about today? How about now?

Even if all I do is move my laptop and my work space out there, isn’t that enough reason to be out in Nature in my own place, rather than argue that I’ll get there someday, while someday speeds by?

You and I are surrounded by beauty. Depending on where you live it will be different, but beauty is always there if we look for it. Every time my pupper pulls at me to slow down, I have the opportunity to either pull back to hurry her along, or to slow down and be in her moment. Our moment.

For someday, likely in about ten years since she’s mostly Great Dane, she too will be gone. There will be a huge hole in my heart when she goes, just like the hole the walnut left in my yard.

I need to take her out to the gazebo with me so that she can monitor the yard for squirrel monsters, aroooooo at the neighbors with her untrammeled joy, and I can enjoy just sitting under the trees.

I need to slow down. Inspect the blades of grass. Let the day inch by and be witness to a life. Mine and hers. And yours.

Let’s play.

the gazebo beckons

Thanks for thinking out loud with me today. Is it time to slow down just once? What are we in such a hurry to do? Life happens anyway. I hope you live yours fully. If you liked this, please consider supporting my work.

And if you know someone who needs to slow down and attend to the beauty around them, please also consider

Thank you.