Stumps signify the final gift trees can offer.

There’s just something about a tree stump. A remnant of what once existed, so strong & tall, now turned into a kind of gravestone marker. Whenever I see a tree stump, I think of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.

For 80s kids like me, who grew up reading Silverstein books full of rhyming poems & hand-sketced images, there’s something nostalgic about revisiting his work. Yet, hands down, the saddest remains The Giving Tree.

A mossy stump in the woods adjacent to the farm.

When I enjoy a walk in the woods, I remember & celebrate the lives of fallen trees I encounter. As you likely know, if you’ve read my posts on trees or nature walks, there’s something reassuring to me when it comes to trees. Perhaps it’s the height, for a shorter person like me? Maybe it’s the strength, as the wood can withstand so many things?

Or maybe it’s the Puckish magic associated with trees, from fairy kingdoms in Shakespeare or enchanted forests in fairytales to towering ents in Tolkien or the foreboding woods of Sleepy Hollow or the Cheshire Cat & momeraths found in Wonderland’s woods? Reading about trees & woods seems to always involve mischief & discovery for young children.

A spider of a tree trunk in the woods at the farm.

And Silverstein’s iconic book about unconditional, sacrificial love demonstrated by a tree for the little boy it loved still haunts me. As an introvert & highly sensitive person (HSP), profound demonstrations of love move me beyond words. I think about the tree who gave all to love the little boy, & it’s hard to look at a tree stump & not remember that story.

The famous illustration of the boy-turned-old-man who visits the tree that always loved him so dearly.

Thus, I often think about human stewardship in caring for & protecting nature, flora & fauna. And this makes me think of how colossally we’ve failed. At what point will we be satisfied with what Nature’s given us & stop asking for more?

Will that day ever come? I’m not so sure. That’s why Tolkien wrote of the elves retiring to the West as humankind were assuming control over Middle Earth, with magic fading as a result. Where does Nature exist in the post-apocalyptic future?

Moss reclaiming a stump.

A stump as a marker on a walking path.

These are the kinds of things I consider when walking on a hike or strolling down paths at the farm. You can see in full measure the existence of life & death as co-inhabitants, the Oscar & Felix or Bert & Ernie of the deep woods. Where new life springs up exuberant & joyful, death is nearby often as the decomposing fertilizing material feeding that new life.

This makes me think of Darwin’s entangled bank, his aesthetic of the primordial mess that engenders all kinds of life, teeming & overflowing in the detritus of decay & decomposition.

Life & death together.

Maybe that’s why my thoughts often turn to death… Not as a sad scary thing, but more from curiosity of what that death then encourages & supports. I’ve long thought about such things, which is likely why I received so many questions as a child as to whether I was okay or why wasn’t I smiling more or why was I so serious. Familiar inquiries for introvert children.

My brain couldn’t just live on the surface of things. It still can’t. If others have died so I can live, if so many organisms have given their lives for me (everything from plants & animals consumed), then I need to make that sacrifice worth something. Mean something greater.

Another old stump in the woods.

Likely it’s that stumps communicate that humans took tree life. We know this, told to us through the unnatural cuts in the stumps left behind as evidence. Maybe that’s why I feel such a great responsibility? Because I do.

How can we ever repay the love of The Giving Tree?

A place to sit, & stay a moment.

Rest your weary feet, the stump says to those it greets.