The search for God's presence on a treeless street

Like a gangrenous limb, they had to be removed. Nineteen pine trees, 15 ficus and two of a variety unfamiliar to me. They were crumpling sidewalks, gutters and curbs, and choking and crushing sewers.

Homeowners, including me and my husband, had been forced to call Roto-Rooter every three months for years. Most of us have had to replace our main sewer lines at least once. The rutted sidewalks were inviting falls and broken bones.

The august trees, more than 30 years old, had to come out. I know, I know.

To watch, though, was unbearable. The sounds were awful enough. Even doors and double-glazed windows couldn't close out the noise from the machinery workers used to fell the trees, chop them to pieces, grind them to sawdust and haul the sawdust away.

In a poem penned in 1902, Dorothy Frances Gurney wrote, "One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth."

Judging from the websites of gardeners on the Internet, many still agree with her.

For me, the line would ring truer if it said, "One's heart and mind and soul can draw nearer to God in a wood or grove than anywhere else on earth." Even Jesus, in his most agonizing hour, called out to his father from Gethsemane, a grove of olive trees.

My first memory of God was a surprise encounter in a North Carolina wood. On a cool spring day, I sprawled on a sweet-smelling floor of moss and leaves under the lacy shade of untold saplings and trees.

As I watched the blue sky and cottony clouds flicker behind their dark limbs and leaves, the songs of angels seeped out of heaven and washed over me. The music let me know that the angels and their maker ? my maker ? were watching over me.

Throughout the early years of my life, my family moved nearly every year. As soon as I made new friends, it seemed, I was leaving them behind to start all over again. But the woods, wherever we lived, were like many houses of God where I could drop by anytime.

The trees were my constant companions. My confidants. Sweet gum and sassafras. Slippery elm and shortleaf pine. Dogwood. Chinaberry. Mimosa. Magnolia.

I'd nestle in the shelter of their canopies, take in their heady fragrances and watch the world from above. Or I'd lie at their feet with a root as my headrest in soothing solitude.