The Companions We Take For Granted
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had to cut down several trees in my yard.
Some were dying, some were leaning too close to the house, their roots loosened by years of rain. It felt necessary. But when the work was done, the yard didn’t feel safer. It felt emptier.
I stood among the stumps, looking at the rings that marked their years. Each circle told a story. Good seasons and bad, wet summers and dry ones, storms survived, winters endured. They had stood through it all, quietly doing what trees do. And then, one morning, I stopped them.
Most of us, at some point, have had a relationship with a tree.
Sometimes up close: the ones we climbed as children, swung from, or hid behind. Sometimes at a distance: the one outside your window that caught the first snow or the last of the evening light. The one we gathered around in photos, like a silent but essential member of the family.
When we’re young, a tree can feel like a friend, a companion that listens without interruption. You sit beneath it to read, to think, or to be alone in a way that doesn’t feel lonely. Later, when you’ve outgrown climbing, it becomes an accomplice, the wingman on a teenage date, offering shade, a place to sit, somewhere to carve initials and symbols when words feel too risky. And after that, it becomes a witness, steady and unchanging, holding its place while the rest of your life keeps moving.
It’s a quiet kind of friendship, the kind you only realize mattered once it’s gone.
Thinking about all this, I started to wonder about loyalty.
Dogs are the ones who get credit for it, and they deserve it. They greet us like heroes, love us through our flaws, forgive us again and again.
But when I think about what truly stays with us, I’m not sure dogs should hold the title alone. Trees have been loyal too.
They don’t wag their tails or follow us from room to room. They don’t need us to notice them. They just stand, patient, steady, giving. They shade our homes in summer, block the wind in winter, and clean the air we breathe. They offer color in spring, fruit in autumn, and a place to rest all year long.
They expect nothing in return.
If loyalty means showing up every day and quietly making life better, then trees have been the most faithful companions we’ve ever had.
Scientists say that trees talk to one another, not in words but through their roots. A network beneath the soil connects them, letting them share water and nutrients, even warnings of danger. When one tree is sick, the others feed it. When a young one struggles, the old ones send it sugar through the ground.
The forest, it turns out, isn’t a collection of individuals. It’s a family. A community.
Meanwhile, we live in a world that has forgotten that truth. We’re told to stand out, to get ahead, to grow taller than the rest. We’ve confused height with worth, competition with purpose.
But trees know something better.
They grow upward when they’re young, reaching for the light. But as they age, they grow outward, thickening, strengthening, deepening their roots. They stop trying to take all the light for themselves. They learn to hold it, and share it.
That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom.
Every autumn, they let go of what no longer serves them. They don’t call it loss. They call it renewal. And every spring, they start again, quietly, without ceremony.
It’s the simplest act of resilience I know.
Maybe that’s why I’m writing this, because I didn’t want to just cut them down and walk away.
They did more for me than I ever noticed. They cooled my house, shielded it from storms, and gave my son a place to climb, a place to grow up. They painted new pictures outside my window every season. They stood guard through every change, through years I barely remember now.
Maybe this is my way of saying thank you—for the shade, for the air, for the stillness, for the lesson.
That sometimes the truest friends don’t walk beside you. They stand beside you.
And they hold their place.