As with so many things that you return to after many years, The Tree was smaller than I expected. In fact, for a good 30 minutes I wasn’t sure it was even the right tree. I knew approximately where it was and had expected it to jump out at me, not giving me a choice about finding it or not. But the constant growth of the forest means it’s never the same, and especially not after years apart. In some ways it felt like the growth had violated my territory, invading it from all sides. That doesn’t make too much sense though, because for one thing, it’s the State’s land, and for another, plants are just doing their thing, in the same way we do ours.

There were no bugs and the sky was nice for a while, before turning gray and rainy as it got dark.  There was no fire to be had, but that was fine, and meant I could climb into my shelter earlier, something I was looking forward to anyway. I had a camping hammock strewn between a couple trees and as the rain grew in intensity, I climbed in.

The sound of rain-taps is one of life’s great things. Whether its on your umbrella, your roof, your rainfly, or your Red Sox hat, it’s always nice. But there’s something nicer: it’s when the rain is falling in the middle of an expansive forest. As I lay there between the trees, I realized the sound of so many rain drops hitting so many leaves is the sound of the ocean, and how interesting it is to realize that, in many ways, it is the ocean falling from the sky. It felt like it was reaching out to me.

I was born on the sea in a town called Newport, which is in Rhode Island. There’s a Naval War College there, a famous bridge, and a walk of mansions that the tourists like to gawk at, holding for themselves temporarily the thought that museum-sized buildings must be nice places to live. My birth certificate is from Newport General Hospital. My mom used to say that if a newborn’s first breaths are of salt air, they’ll have special relationship with the sea for life. I used to like thinking about that, and how well it explained the feeling I got–and still get– when I’m back near the big water.

So, out there in my hammock it felt like I was being called to, gently, and I liked that feeling very much, and I felt called to in other ways, too. My last time out at The Tree, my dog, “Sage”, was with me.

Sage and I had a special relationship, one that will never be repeated in my lifetime. I picked her out from a friend’s dog’s litter on a farm about 20 miles away, “Frost Farm” it was called. I named her because of a Simon Garfunkle song on their “Concert in Central Park” double cassette that I was given for Christmas earlier that year, and had by then already memorized all the lyrics to. Sage used to walk with me to school and be there when I got out at 2:16p. We’d dart homewards immediately to drop my school bag before heading out into the woods, which we did nearly every day. That continued right up until I left for boarding school in high school. As I spent more time away from home, I felt lonely for Sage and wished I could have taken her with me. But she belonged out there in the woods, near The Tree, and every visit home was an ecstatic ordeal for both of us. My mom used to say that Sage hibernated whenever I’d leave, and would pounce back to life whenever I was home. I felt similarly about myself.

The Tree was sacred ground to me, and I’m pretty sure it was to her, too. She would become docile and pensive on that lookout point, and would sit with me there, something she usually had a hard time doing, because, like me, sitting still wasn’t in our wiring. But that area was good for both of us.  That’s where we grew up together and had our times, including our last time together, when she struggled to climb over the roots and the rocks, and kept looking at me, seemingly embarrassed that she somehow couldn’t keep up. And as much as it breaks one’s heart, you know, that’s what happens. The last time I was with her, I carried her the rest of the way and we sat there together for hours, just looking out from that hill and over the land we had conquered together. The stone I found for her grave is special. I found it on the beach in Maine, and it was massive and black, very out of place, like us. I used my old, rusty Jeep named Beauty, to bring it back to our woods. It weighed 141lbs, and I put it in my seabag, which at the time was active duty.  It took me 15 hours over two days to carry it 5 miles, partially up hill, and get it to her grave.