During the mid 1960s, Fredonia State College was in expansion mode. The University system implemented the legal authority of emanate domain to consume about a dozen homes on the east side of Temple Street between the college entrance and Brigham Road. It was the neighborhood I grew up in – a hybrid array of Tudor, ranch, Victorian and cottage style homes occupied by middle class folks. (I believe the houses, had they been allowed to stand, would be in better shape today than those boxy, dreary dorms that replaced them.)

It was not just the houses that were sacrificed. Lining the sidewalks and shading the yards of the neighborhood was a host of mature deciduous and coniferous trees. My memory, at the risk of sentimentalizing, recollects them in the summer as a canopy – an overarching quilt of forest green leaves and pine needles through which the sun filtered gently. And beyond our yards was an open space with walkways and tunnels (our bike paths) connecting the humble brick halls of the old campus buildings – my childhood playground.

Thankfully, all the trees along that stretch of Temple Street were not destroyed. A few that were in my yard survived the demolition, excavation, and construction of the new dorms.

I know those trees; I climbed them, played hide and seek with friends among them, and jumped in their leaf piles during the fall. Today, every summer, I visit them and meditate in their midst, as if I could somehow summon a magic portal leading me into the past.

Science tells us how important trees are to our planet. We learn as kids about the water cycle: water evaporates from the oceans, rises to form clouds, and moves inland land to provide the rain necessary for life. Yet by itself, the supply of cloud manufactured rain would be exhausted within 400 miles of the coast. Trees serve to transport that water inland to higher elevations through an elaborate root system that acts like a series of pumps. Hence, the vast majority of today’s America would be barren and lifeless were it not for trees. Moreover, it is common knowledge that trees clean the air of carbon dioxide, thus limiting damage to the ozone layer and mitigating global warming.

Beyond natural science, there is a growing awareness of trees as sentient beings – that they are alive and aware of their existence. German scientist and forest researcher Peter Wohlleben asserts in his book The Hidden Lives of Trees that the roots of trees employ a network of communication signals, with fungi as primary agents, to form communal relationships with the trees around them, no matter the species. There exists a collective consciousness among them that strives to protect and preserve their ecosystem.

I’ll go out on a limb here: Trees live in three worlds. In the underworld of dirt, rock and clay, their roots absorb more than just nutrients for their “upper” body; they probe the lightless depths seeking vibrations of life – the sounds of insect industry, of hidden muddy rivers, of worms boring through hollowed wooden boxes, of their own brothers and sisters claiming territory as they reach farther and deeper through the darkness of that world.

On the earth’s surface, the trunks and lower branches of trees are stoic sentries, absorbing the assault of nature’s tantrums. Forests buffer the vast emptiness between the sea and the desert, sheltering creatures great and small. The woods are places of refuge, the womb of the world.

High above, the treetop branches move with ineffable grace and hidden strength. They bow, bend, sway, and swoon, dancing with the wind.

Perhaps the wisest and most intriguing of all J.R.R. Tolkein’s characters in The Lord of the Rings were the Ents – those timeless tree-creatures whose slowness to action was only exceeded by the depth of their understanding of the earth. They were as old as Middle Earth itself.

Perhaps the best place for meditation on trees, or any other mystery of life, is the graveyard. In Fredonia’s Forest Hill cemetery, massive 300 year-old trees commingle with the headstones of our human ancestors. I wonder if quiet intimacies exist there, ones to which we are not yet privy. And maybe the voices we seem to hear are not just the wind through the trees.

Pete Howard, a musician, writer, teacher, and painter, lives in Dunkirk.