Big P.

My favorite place to go without a shadow of a doubt. If I’m ever feeling depressed, angry, or upset I know I can go there. Whether it’s to sit, wallow, yell, curse or scream, I know I can count on my best friend to make everything new. The ground beneath my feet that holds me steady, the natural ground is the best support system my body has come to know. I feel safe here. I have a place here. It’s also where my most joyful memories happen to live. The space where I can run to when I need to clear my head of all the junk that seems to seep through without my permission. A place to celebrate my victories and shout my biggest and brightest ideas from the inside, so I can fully absorb them and they fully absorb me back. My go-to spot on any given day sometimes simply just to rest and be, mostly just to be. Unapologetically, my most authentic self without any trace of guilt or shame the world has tried to label me with. Here I return to myself as I’m free from everything that refuses to let me go. My original home and dwelling place, back to nature and back to my roots with just me and my tree.

THE pear tree aka big sis, aka auntie, aka best friend, aka Big P, aka TT (tree tribe), and the list could go on and on and on. I can’t explain it we just align together, like I was born half tree or something haha… can you imagine. Whenever we hang out we exchange energies that transcend language but I swear sometimes She speaks directly. My own personal hole in the wall, or more like a hole in the ground, but I love it that way. She knows my deepest darkest secrets, the kind that are formally written down and never uttered. The kind that are best kept safe in the silence of a tree over a flapping set of gums that can’t hold water. I named her Goldie, after the golden yellow pears she gave birth to when we first met.

Sometimes it felt like She was my mom and not the woman who actually raised me. Yeah mama would make sure I always had a meal to eat, clothes on my back, and everything I ever needed…or I guess what she thought I needed. See the main difference is Goldie listens, and I mean really listens to me like I'm the only person she ever heard speak. When I talk to TT it’s like I can feel her leaves wrapping me in one big hug for whatever it is I need in that moment. To this day I’ll never understand how the sound of silence soothed my soul more than my own mother’s touch, but I guess there are some things that do not have answers.

Like how I sit and lay at P’s feet all day long and feel like I’ve ingested more knowledge than the first half of undergrad. After a hour with her I instantly feel less stressed so my racing thoughts cease, and just like that a tidal like wave of calmness rushes over me the moment I step into Goldie's path. It’s wild. I guess that also makes her like my tree doctor? If that's what you want to call it. I come to her with the things I’m carrying and I always seem to leave feeling lighter and more full. Then I end up forgetting what I was even depressed, angry, or upset about in the first place. P does this all without verbalizing one single word, a true magician. This pear tree taught me a different type of peace. The type that doesn’t beg to be wanted, stands still, and doesn’t have to wait to be noticed. It just is. As it is so is She, peaceful. As She is then so am I. Peaceful.