The Day I Decided to Become a Tree

I think it was sometime in my twenties when I decided to become a tree.

I was in the apartment I shared with two other guys in a little suburb outside the city. The day was overcast, and I was staring out the window, a book lying face down in front of where I sat cross-legged on the bed.

Nothing had happened in my life for what seemed like a long time, and I felt like I was probably battling some deep-seated depression that came from my mother, or how my father reacted when I brought home B’s and C’s that one semester of high school.

Not like I cared deeply about those things, but something was definitely wrong.

I could hear my roommates in the living room battling monsters or terrorists or whatever on their new game console. I’d lost interest in trying to play with them a few weeks back; like everything else in my life, it seemed to be going nowhere.

My mom had called me the day before, I remember, and I rejected the call. I was doing that more and more; not just Mom, but everybody. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I had this sick feeling in my stomach. It wasn’t outright nausea, but it kept me from really ever wanting to each much of anything. But I did enjoy sitting in the sunshine.

So I decided to become a tree.

My friends would probably have laughed if I’d told them, since the highest ideals in their lives seemed to be going to the gym and looking at pictures of eligible bachelorettes on dating websites. They were always showing each other their phones, and oohing and ahhing over this chick or that, passing refined judgment on her relative charms.

That was another thing in which I’d lost interest.

The idea had been budding in my mind for a few days; today I decided to act. Un-tree-like, I suppose, but I chalked it up to the intrinsic irony of life.

--

I walked out across the parking lot of the apartment complex, and through the little faux-wrought-iron door that stood beside the larger one for cars. The door clanged behind me as I went searching for an appropriate spot near the little flower patch beneath the sign that read “Cedar Grove Apartment Village.”

Next to a pine tree—there were no cedars—I bent down, and picked up two fallen branches. I went and stood a little way off from that pine tree, and a respectful distance from the sign. I didn’t want to be cut down. I took a branch in each hand, and held my arms out.

And I stood there. I was a tree. The moment was anticlimactic, some might argue, but it was just what I had been looking for. I felt refreshed, to tell the truth. The sun danced down in little beams on my head, and I could almost—almost—feel myself beginning to grow.

It was maybe a few minutes before a car approached the gate to my right. The driver didn’t seem to notice me as she rolled down her window and waved her little magnetic card against the reader. I heard the machine beep, and the gate begin to creak open. I didn’t mind; I was a tree. My mind was consumed with tree-like thoughts. Thoughts of stillness, and maybe a little gentle swaying.

The wind came by and ruffled my leaves, and I let myself relax into its cool embrace. Ahhhh…

This was the life for me.

A few minutes more, and another car approached the gate. This driver didn’t notice me either, and went through the exact same routine. A dog sat in his passenger seat, and barked at me. I stood there, and thought treeish thoughts of calmness and oneness and eternal, abiding peace.

Then, a car approached the gate, but this time from the inside. It stopped just over the white line painted on the blacktop indicating a safe distance from the opening gate. The window rolled down, and the car swerved out of its designated lane as it exited through the gate and pulled up alongside where I stood.

“Uhh… Ryan?” I heard. “What are you doing?”

I stood there, absorbed in tree-ness.

“Dude, are you cool? What are you doing?” Trees bear such questions philosophically.

“Maybe he’s high,” I heard someone else in the car say. One of my former roommates’ friends, the rapidly fading still-human part of me surmised.

“He’d have to be pretty high. Think he’ll be okay?”

“Well, he’s not responding, so… we’ll check on him when we get back, if he’s still there. He’ll probably get hot and go inside. It’s uncomfortable just having this window open.” And with that, the window rolled right back up, and my former roommates and their friends disappeared in a cloud of choking exhaust. I felt my leaves dying a little as they breathed it.

The sun shone down in thicker beams, and I felt sweat… condensation collecting on my trunk and branches. Bugs crawled up me to make their homes among my leaves, and I loved them, for they were my trusted companions to fight off the other bugs, the ones that might worm under my bark and…

“Honey, come look at this,” I heard. A woman came down the sidewalk walking a pipsqueak of a dog. The dog yapped at me, its neck contracting and relaxing with each bark. It strained at its leash until it nearly choked itself. She was shouting up to the window of one of the apartments near the entrance. I heard a door slam behind me, and then the clang of the iron gate as the woman stared and her little dog continued yowling itself hoarse.

“Whoa.” A guy in his late thirties came and stood beside her. He folded his arms and stared at me.

The dog continued to howl.

“Hey man,” the guy said, approaching me. “What are you doing?” He paused, as if waiting for an answer. His face grew more concerned when I, the tree, did not reply.

I relaxed further into thoughts of treeish stillness and poise. My branches wavered in the wind. My branches were beginning to shake a bit, even when the wind did not blow. Sw… condensation collected on my upper branches. I felt hot beneath the sun. My leaves made chlorophyll from the sun, and the energy flowed through me as my branches drooped.

“Something is up with this guy.”

“Well, he’s not hurting anyone,” the woman said.

“Yeah, but it’s weird. Is he pretending to be a tree?”

“I guess so. See, he’s holding branches.”

“Looks like his arms are getting tired. Look, he keeps lowering them. But how come he won’t just say that’s what he’s doing?”

“Well, I guess a tree wouldn’t respond, so maybe he’s just really in character. Like, a method actor or something.”

“Man, actors are sure weird,” the guy said. He went back inside. The woman stared at me a minute longer, and went back on her way.

Trees precipitate peace wherever they are. They accept what is, and do not fight against it. And so I did just that. I stood there in the sunlight, and felt my roots growing into the ground, my branches soaking up the sunlight, and water flowing all through me with all its life-giving power.

--

I passed the night in peace, standing with my brother the pine tree and my cousins the flowers. The insects all went in for the night, crawling into whatever burrows they had on the ground or in my brother the pine. None had made their homes in me, as yet.

The next morning dawned, and I felt more treelike than ever. As the first rays of the sun burst over the horizon, I felt the joy and the peace of my new existence. I did not think of my old life, for trees have no such thoughts.

My roommates had passed me by as evening fell, the day before. They had pulled up, rolled down the window once again, now shy a few of the friends with whom they’d left. They had questioned me, like before, but when they found that their former roommate was still decidedly a tree, they shrugged at each other, pulled through the iron gate, and went back into the apartment.

--

The man who had come outside the day before was out again, this time in running clothes. He stopped near me to toy with his music player, then put headphones into his ears and took off at a light jog down the road. He paid me a passing glance, his face still faintly troubled by lines of confusion at why I should become a tree.

--

The old lady who lived the floor below where my old roommates did was the first to accept me. She came out a little after the man had left for his morning run. She had a water can, and she stopped to sprinkle the water around my trunk. Her hair was white and unkempt, and she walked very slowly, but I was grateful to her for the water as it seeped into the ground and was taken up by my spreading roots.

The man approached, sweating and breathing heavily now, as the old woman was watering me.

“Eunice,” he said. She did not hear him. “Hey, Eunice!” She looked up.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Barnes.”

“Eunice, Mr. Barnes doesn't live here. My name’s Bill. I live in the next building over. And that’s not a tree.”

“I’m just watering the plants, Mr. Barnes. I didn’t think you’d mind. Especially now that your son’s gone off to college and isn’t here to do any of the chores…”

“Eunice, it’s Bill.” Eunice looked confused for a moment, like she didn’t know what to say. Then she turned and continued to water my trunk.

The ground around me was getting muddy, and dirty water ran in little streamlets down the sidewalk.

“Eunice, this is it. I’m calling your son and telling him you have to go to the senior living center.” Eunice seemed to snap out of her reverie. She gave Bill a look that meant death.

“Well, fuck you too, Mr. Barnes! I don’t care if you do evict me! Your son was always a stupid little shit, too! So how do you like that!” She threw the metal water can at him, and it bounced off his head. He yelled out and held his hands against where his temple had begun to bleed, as Eunice hobbled her fastest across the lawn and back through the gate, clanging it behind her. I heard another noise, and then Bill took his hands from his face and ran to the iron gate.

He banged on the door. “Eunice, unlock this gate!”

“You can stay out there all night, Mr. Barnes.” She cackled. “My son will be home soon and he’ll teach you what’s what. He’s on the football team, you know.”

“Eunice, I’m serious!” I heard across the lawn the sound of Eunice making farting noises at Bill. Then she was gone, and Bill was banging on the gate and yelling after her. “You’d better come back here, you…” he trailed off.

He came back and stood in front of me.

“This is all your fault. Now you’ve got Eunice all riled up. She’s old, and fragile, don’t you get it? I talk to her son all the time and he’s worried about her. With good reason, too. I hope you can see that.”

I stood, just being.

Bill eventually threw up his hands in frustration and walked away. He got down on his belly and rolled beneath the gap in the iron gate meant for cars, and there came the sound of him unlocking the iron gate and muttering to himself as he went back inside.

I was alone with my treeish being once again. The sun beat down now, and my leaves shivered when the wind blew. Condensation poured off my branches, and I wondered if perhaps I had caught a treeish disease. But I was grateful to be a tree. It was not so simple as I’d imagined, being a tree, but I was committed to keep trying.

--

A few quiet and treely hours later, a young man came down the street. He was tall, and his hair fell in a single untidy braid down his back. His shirt was dirty and torn, and he carried a backpack and a guitar slung on either side of an old aluminum bike. He saw me, and stopped to look.

“Aww, dude, you are radical right now,” he said. “Are you a tree?”

I held my branches high and soaked up the sun, making chlorophyll to live. The young man chuckled to himself.

“Right on. Trees don’t talk; I get it. Can I like, sit under your branches and play my guitar for a minute?” He paused. “Okay, cool.” And he laid his bike down beside me and pulled out a beat-up old classical guitar. He stuck his butt in the mud where Eunice had watered me, and leaned up against my trunk. He strummed his guitar, twisted one of the tuning knobs, strummed again, and twisted another.

In a few minutes, he was tuned up, and he began to play. Trees adore music. I lifted my branches, though the sun threatened to beat them down.

He began to sing. His voice was terrible, but I was a tree, and trees do not pass judgment on such things.

“Oh, I like to smoke weed,” he crooned.

“And I got no house;

“I’m just a rambler,

“Like a little mouse.”

“Good freaking God!” I yelled. I threw down the branches and lurched away from him, mud splattering everywhere. “Being a tree is worse than being a person! I thought this was going to be a peaceful existence, but it's the most stressful thing I've ever done! I'm going back to being a person. At least things make some sense. My arms feel like they're going to fall off...” I noticed then that the young man was staring at me.

“Oh, dude. I did not meant to interrupt your, like, floral serenity.”

“Get away from me, man. You smell like garbage and I do not want to hang out with you.”

“I am, like, so sorry, dude.” He put his guitar back in the case, and slung it back on his bike. “Well, tootles, tree-man.” And he rode away, wobbling against the unbalanced load on his bike.

My arms ached and I was pouring sweat. I could smell my own armpits. I took off my shirt and wiped my forehead with it. I wondered if I was dehydrated.

I opened the gate that led into the apartment complex, and walked back up the stairs to my apartment. I opened the door, and there sat my two roommates, back at their games, as usual.

I passed them, and they exchanged a glance.

“You cool, Ryan? We saw you out there. Were you high or something?”

“No, moron. I was a tree. But it was a terrible idea, so I guess I'm gonna have to live here with you people again.”

“… oh.” They were quiet again. One of their game characters was killed by a zombie, I saw, as they both stared at me. I went into my bedroom and shut the door.

I sat back on my bed, and threw my damp shirt into a corner, on a pile of other dirty clothes. I looked out the window. It was sunny, and I was glad to be inside. I reached over onto my nightstand, and pulled my smartphone toward me. I opened the dating site app I'd neglected the last few months. The site's logo appeared, and I lay back on my bed, feeling truly relaxed for the first time in months.