I’ve never felt particularly fascinated by trees. At home, trees were only really special at night. The two giant pine trees at the edge of my neighborhood didn’t have branches until almost forty feet up the trunk. The tops of them fanned out like a single asymmetrical hand and they always sat up completely straight. Their pinecones would cover the street and wilt under cars and sun. I used to peel them apart and kick them around waiting to play outside of my neighbor’s house. 

But at night they breathed like me. They were hulking shapes swathed in shadows against a small pocket of stars. Their bundles of pines looked knowing and ominous in their sway above me. I craned my neck and enjoyed the thrill of them looking a little scary. 

These pines, loblolly pines, were the trees that lined the highways. They were the only arboreal difference I noticed at first from the South to the North on the Eastern Seaboard. The highway trees here seem richer with color throughout summer and fall, when leaves live to be illuminated in the sunlight. Then, when winter arrives, I can’t tell if I want the green or the decay more. 

Branches are a brittle reminder of the season. It’s a slow loss, an even slower regeneration, and it’s hardly worth it to be able to see the plan of a tree in its unshielded architecture. I don’t like being able to feel this change. Surrounded as I am by delicately gorgeous deciduous trees here, I miss the secret charms of the loblolly—a loss that reminds me of the others that I left behind.