Let us walk together

my dad often took me to the woods. He is a person who believes in hugging trees — and not in a metaphorical way. If a tree was too big to fully embrace, he’d stretch out his arms and press his body, head turned to one side, against the trunk of some old-growth behemoth. Other times he’d I grew up feeling that trees, and all of nature, were part of our family, that we were our best selves when we were among them.