Julie Taylor

Inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing’s The Good Life, my parents uprooted our family of five from the ever-growing Twin Cities of Minnesota, where we were all born, and moved us four hours north to a 136-acre farm with a half mile of shoreline on Hungry Lake. My friends lived too far away so I befriended the trees and plants of the place. As a nine-year-old I named each hill and each walking trail: on “Ridge Trail,” hepaticas poked their little bud heads out of the rotting leaves in the spring, exposing the morels growing at the feet of the pines; “Gooseberry Mountain” was the hill where the deer slept and gooseberry bushes flourished; and “Willow Way” was the one-third of a mile driveway that I ran to catch the school bus or to check out books from the Bookmobile that came once a month. 

Those first years there were paradise. Wild strawberries the size of orange seeds filled our buckets, while raspberry and blackberry bushes were weighed down to the ground with fruit; sprinkled along “Willow Way” were chokecherry and pincherry trees filled with berries that my mother made into delectable jellies and syrups. Each day brought new friends to meet and get to know —small handfuls of black-eyed susans, yarrow, red columbine, and daises were there for summer picking; bellwort, bluebells, pink and yellow lady slippers, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpits, cattails, and marsh marigolds were discovered and admired in situ. Pussy willows grew for Mother’s Day bouquets. Foxtails, milkweed, purple prairie clover, fireweed, and timothy grew in the open fields and ditches as a testament to wild perseverance. 

In the winter after a snowfall, trees turned into sparkling sculptures that dazzled the imagination. White birch, aspen, poplar and oak trees, silver and sugar maples grew as I grew.  On Arbor Day that first spring, I was given two spruce seedlings that I named “Tweensie” and “Star” —over the years, I watched them grow into towering wise elders holding gifts of cardinal, goldfinch, and chickadee nests.

So, when my parents were selling the property after 45 years, I visited one last time to walk through the overgrown trails and woods to say “so long, fare thee well” to the flowers and trees and plants that had made my childhood glorious and magical. I had no tears that day, because, as with any good friend, their magnitude and impact is felt deeply in the heart. 

My poem, “Crown of Thorns” originated from a typical winter’s day after cross country skiing through woods and fields and finding myself covered in seeds. At first, I found the seed removals a nuisance, but over the years I began to understand how persistent plants are about propagating and not just about survival.