The Tree Told Me Everything Is Divine (So I Climbed It)

I spent most of my childhood up a tree.

There was a giant oak across the street from our house, behind a wooden fence. I was four years old, and getting to the lowest branch required a whole engineering project: drag one of the outside rubbish bins over, turn it upside down, balance it against the fence, climb the fence, stand on the bin, and only then could I reach up and hope my little arms would hold on long enough. It took everything I had. And I did it without a second thought.

Decades later, on the river walk near where I live now, I still stop to hug trees. Mainly, the ones too big for my arms to meet on the other side.

A few nights ago I went for that walk after dark. There’s a tree along the path I usually skip, not because I don’t love it, but because it stands in a very public spot and I don’t much fancy hugging a tree in front of an audience, although certainly I have. But it was nighttime, the path was empty, and I thought, why not. So I put my arms around it.

And it was as though someone was standing right there, speaking to me. Clear as day:

Shannon, everything is all right.

Not everything is going to be okay. That’s a future tense. That’s a promise that asks you to wait. This was something else entirely. Everything is divine. Already true. Nothing broken that needs fixing, nothing pending that needs resolving. Just alright, right now, as it is.

I carried that with me down the path, past the huge favourite trees I hug all the time, the ones with roots so big and chunky you can stand on them. I stood there a moment, thinking about that childhood fence, working out just how enormous that oak must actually have been to a four-year-old. What a commitment that little girl made, every single time, just to reach the first branch.

And then I came to the tree that has been inviting me to climb it for four years.

I know that sounds strange, a tree inviting you. It stands there with all of its many branches extended, waiting. But I’ve walked past it more times than I can count, and something in me has always paused there. It’s in a public spot too. And I’m sixty-four. I genuinely didn’t know if I could still do it, hang upside down by my arms, hoist myself up, get a leg over a branch. When was the last time I even tried?

But the other tree had just told me everything is divine. So I thought: well then. Apparently it’s time.

The lowest branch was easy enough to reach with my arms up. I hung there first, just testing whether I could hold my own weight. I could. So I threw a leg up and over the branch, which was its own small comedy. Then I needed to actually get myself up, and that’s when I found it, a foot and ankle wedging under the next branch along, giving me exactly the leverage I needed. And suddenly it was no problem at all. I was up.

I sat there on that first perch, not even needing to climb higher, completely overjoyed. Four years old again. Struck by my own ankle, of all things, this strong quiet joint doing its job perfectly after who knows how long since I last asked anything like this of it. What an amazing body I have, I thought. Sitting there in the branches of a tree I’ve hugged so many times, finally inside its embrace instead of just around it.

Earlier that same afternoon, I’d caught my cat Ghost up in the tree in the front garden, freshly clipped back. I didn’t even know she climbed trees. She’s a cat, apparently that tracks, but still, it caught me off guard. And then that night, there I was doing the very same thing.

Up in the branches, giggling in the dark, taking selfies I couldn’t really see the results of, I felt something I can only describe as unselfconscious joy. As a child you don’t question whether you can climb the tree. You just wonder how. No fear, no audience in your head weighing whether you’ll look foolish. That certainty is so easy to lose over a lifetime, one cautious decade at a time, until one day you’re standing in front of a low branch wondering if your body still remembers how.

Mine did.

I think I need to climb that tree more often now. And I have a feeling it won’t matter anymore that it’s in a public place. Because now I know I can do it. And once you know that about yourself, being witnessed stops being the point.

Somewhere in you there’s a four-year-old who never doubted the tree. Not tonight, maybe, but sometime soon, find your version of the low branch. Test your weight. See what your ankle remembers. Channel your inner feline. Whatever you need, you’ve got it all.