Woody's Wood
the 3 eastern white pines that grew together creating a tiny fort to play under, in my suburban backyard
a twisted oak in a field I pass between my friend’s house upstate and our favorite swimming hole
the banyan on my study-abroad trip in south India, we’d climb up and watch the sun set over the pond
the row of cypress that line the entrance to Point Reyes state park, saw wild elk
the blueberry bush in white lake, ny, where we picked after swimming
the giant oak tree on the farm in southern Oregon, that grew the first mistletoe I ever noticed, that we would sleep under
the ginkgo tree, can almost touch it from my roof in Brooklyn
These are some of the trees that are deeply engrained in my memory. Some of these I’ve really spent time with, and others I met once — but anyway, something about trees hits the limbic system like a grandmother’s perfume. Memories of trees we decided are special bring us to those times - where we were of course, but also, who we were. To remember who I was in my pine fort, climbing the banyan, or reaching for ginkgo is each a distinctly somatic experience.
One of the true delights of life is the magic of the “small world” moment — the run-in, the “you know [Mutual Friend’s Name]!?!?”, the time I met someone I sort of knew on a Himalayan summit, the time David Beckham passed me on Bowery..
I’ve been thinking about how these relational encounters expand beyond people-to-people. My special trees are someone else’s special trees too — and are another way to know each other. Last night, at a bonfire, I met one of Woody Guthrie’s special trees.
I was visiting friends at their house in Morris Plains, New Jersey — a town far from Oklahoma, where I knew this American folk legend to come from — but near where one Woody Guthrie was found in 1956 “wandering aimlessly on the highway”, claiming to police that he was the writer of 8,000 songs, and where he was promptly institutionalized for what was then a poorly-understood genetic disease called Huntington’s chorea. At age 44, he began his 5 year stint (he titled “the wardy forties”) at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. Accounts from his three children - Nora, Arlo, and Joady - and their mother Marjorie include stories of weekly visits to Woody, and also of a gigantic weeping beech tree that the kids would play on, which Woody called “The Magiky Tree.”
Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital operated until 2008 and was demolished in 2015. Other facilities have been built and house residents, but back in 2001, about 300 acres of the land were sold to the county for $1 (and a lot of asbestos to deal with) and are now a public park. It is at this park where my friend Matt, Morris Plains resident, was taking a walk, spotted a fallen branch below a large weeping beech, and hauled it home to chop up for firewood.
Woody’s Magiky tree turns to ash before my eyes and the world feels small, like I can know anyone. I wonder who Woody was as a newly dying person at 44, sitting by this beech tree in the New Jersey suburbs. I find that he spent his institutionalized years accepting visitors - young artists and musicians essentially making pilgrimage to be with and learn from him. He becomes the special tree to visit. Woody. For months, I’ve been singing This Land Is Your Land to my baby niece simply because it is what comes to mind, and so it goes
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