Every tree is a mystery. Each one beckons me with silent stories, secret whisperings, untold history. I stand amongst them, knowing that most of them will outlive me, and soak up their beauty.

I have loved trees since I was a child, though I was not aware of it then. I grew up beneath huge poplars, delicate paper birches, and sheltering Manitoba maples, with a fruitful crab-apple tree in the middle that exploded into blossom late every spring. Branches provided hideouts for games and a secret reading spot; fallen leaves provided walls for forts and annual autumnal perfume and sound. Birds, squirrels, and more insects than I’d care to imagine made their homes in those trees; cedar waxwings came to devour the mountain-ash berries, robins rustled in the fallen leaves for food, and squirrels collected whatever crab apples we didn’t use (I even trained one to take them from my hand). Best of all were the lilacs, with their short-lived but glorious scent. Ours was a bleak northern town, but at least it had trees.

On the drive southward toward the city, much of the five or six hours was spent watching the evergreens pass on either side, interrupted only by the occasional small town, oil rig, or moose. The landscape became more interesting once we passed Edmonton and drove the final three hours to my grandparents’ farm: rolling hills, lakes, views of distant mountains. Once we reached the farm, though, we were once more enclosed in trees; only glimpses of the surrounding farmsteads and the coulee out back were visible through the thick stands of poplar that circled the house, garden, and barns.

We’d hike through the trees, my grandfather and I, and he’d show me the old dumping ground for post-slaughter cattle bones, the even older well with the bison skull at the bottom, the disused railway line, the straight line of evergreens planted in the previous century by the owners of the original homestead, where a little cabin once stood. Then there was the treehouse – built by my dad and his sisters and cousins – now just a floor of slanted planks, some shredded black plastic, and steps nailed into one of the tree trunks, grown too high to climb. How quickly those poplars grew in the hot prairie sun, despite their long winter hibernation…

I grew up and began to realize my love for trees, but by then I’d seen too many pictures of the Canadian maples turning red out east and the giant oaks of England, and the prairie trees seemed pathetic by comparison. It wasn’t for the trees that I came to Ireland, but the trees have helped me, appropriately, put down roots here. The great oaks of Malahide were the first to take my breath away, and the yew at Muckross Abbey remains my favourite. I live on the edge of the city now, with a wall of cedars scenting my back garden on rainy days, smooth-barked copper beeches in the park next door, and a young lilac I’ve just bought to remind me of Home.