nests of my childhood // forest of habitations

habitation: from habere (Lat.): to have, to hold

the plants that held me

I think it was as big as I remember it: the husk of the old god, its insides scaly with shiny black char, its outsides ruddy and fibrous. It was the centerpiece of the hikes in Wunderlich Park, a spectacular redwood forest in Woodside; redwoods grow in a way I’ve heard described as “from the toenails of their parents”, such that the forests have an underground root system and new trees sprout up in a circle around their elders, creating new groves when the old ones fall to fire. Sometimes the old ones don’t fall when they catch fire and become hollowed from the inside, so the new trees grow gathered around a place like this one, with rotted gnarls that are now windows, with striations on the bark that are now siding. The interior was carpeted with the springy mulch of the biome, shredded rust-colored bark and fragrant discarded needles. When I was pretty small and my brother was really small, the burnt interior of the redwood felt cavernous, a space easily big enough to hold both of us.

“Beach Forest” was our name for the cypress grove south of our house along the coast, where the unyielding salty winds bent the trees along the bluffs towards the earth at an angle. My childhood best friend and I scaled the tree with the hanging moss, tossing it to the ground from high above and then gathering it in our arms. Its spongy tendrils, pale green with a comforting loamy smell, had a surprising cushion to them when packed together. We brought these armfuls into the high crook of one beautiful tree to form a child-sized nest. In our brief moments away from the nest, we would scurry down to the shore, which was dotted with sun-bleached driftwood and washed up wands of kelp. We gathered sea snail shells with the bright coloration of a Mandarin duck’s plumage and smooth sandstone pieces with holes bored by the tides, bringing our favorites back to our tree.

Behind my elementary school in Woodside, a stately and fragrant bay laurel leant up against a chain link fence in just such a way that I, sometimes along with a friend, could clamber up its boughs and drop down over the fence on the other side. Beyond the fence, a culvert – “the creek” – wound through an oak forest, carving through muddy banks rich with blue clay that could be molded into pinch pots and dried in the sun. In the mild winter, the water ran cold and clear, the riverbed rocks smooth from the current, the whole area carpeted with clumps of moss and populated with massive banana slugs. In the summer, when the creek became just a trickle that could be forded easily by small legs, we would cross it to reach the massive thicket of wild blackberries, heavy with ripeness in the heat, their purple juice staining our fingers all afternoon. 

Godetia Drive’s olive trees stood between the yellow-and-white striped awnings of the house and the wooden fence of white roses with the Santa Cruz Mountains cutting a horizon into the deep-blue California sky. Their pale boughs were limber like a child’s arms, and green under the bark, with small purple olives hanging amongst the slender, silvery leaves. I liked to inhabit one of its elbows in particular, a sturdy fork with views into the kitchen, over the deck where I could see my mom baking bread on the marble counters, and out the other direction, to the horses and the distant mountain range. I scratched shapes into the bark, never out of malice, but out of a desire to make the place feel like me, like mine. Once I slipped on my way down and got a gash cut into my leg that left a scar. It was never the tree’s fault. I was just in too much of a hurry.

In the meadow at the base of the property, the early spring grass grew tall and lush. As a child, it completely concealed my body when I crawled through it on all fours, pretending to be a wild animal as though I wasn’t one already. I would weave through it, crushing a path with my palms and knees and releasing its brightly vegetal scent into the tunnels. All paths in that meadow led to the pomegranate tree, the crown jewel of the orchard, where the last broken-open fruits from the winter shone like bleeding rubies under the sun. In the tree’s deep shade the grass grew thickly, and I flattened it down, cushioning the enclave beneath the thicket of twigs and leaves, forming a nest just the size of my body.

Just above the meadow, towards the house, a sap-sticky fir tree harbored a treehouse, which was really just a few planks of plywood nailed haphazardly to scaly branches. In peak pomegranate season, my brother and I would collect armfuls of fruit and wade through the grasses, our legs becoming wet with dew, bits of grass and dirt on our skin, and bring a few prize fruits up to the treehouse. Unwilling to crunch down on the hard arils, we would methodically peel away the papery membranes and fill our mouths with seeds to experience a burst of the tart juice that turned our teeth and lips bright red, then spit the seeds into the grass far below our bare feet. 

The summers there were gold and dry. The tall grasses in the meadow crisped up and whispered to each other in the wind. Towering above them was a lone Coast Live oak, with deeply furrowed bark and spiky cupped leaves. This particular tree stood next to a steep hill such that one strong branch touched the ground at extension, and I could climb up it into the nexus of the branches. One summer, I saved up my allowance and bought a green camping hammock that I strung up in the branches. Its sheer nylon folds cradled my body in that canopy as I read in the high shade through the afternoons and into the evenings. When it started to get too dark to read clearly and the mosquitos came out, I climbed reluctantly down and back into the house.

Across the street at the base of the driveway, by one of the horse pastures, our neighbors had an untended cherry plum tree that grew with wild, twiggy abandon. I would go there when I wanted some time alone, past the white picket fence, with the lilies of the valley luminous in the deep shade. Perched in the coarse, crosshatched branches, with dark purple leaves caught in my hair, I would stretch to reach the plump little plums. These plums blend perfectly into their foliage, requiring some patience to identify where the leaves end and the smooth, juice-taut globes begin. Beneath the bitter skin is a syrupy bite of pulp. Spitting the pits down into the dusty horse pastures got the attention of the animals, who would then come stand curiously by the tree, looking up at me with their lovingly empty, baleful eyes, rustling their manes to shake loose the flies.

Beside the pineapple sage, along the path up to the vineyard, the paved area is lined with English and Spanish lavender bushes interspersed with elegant sedges, their beautiful blonde grasses catching the breezes. One of the Spanish lavenders, with its plump florets and feathery petals, spread into a welcoming semicircular shape around a particularly thick sedge. When I would flatten down the hair of the sedge over the dusty gravel, it provided a suitably silky carpet to rest on, curled up in the gentle hold of the lavender brush. A honey-sweet way to experience young life. 

Spring at that house held me; it offered many afternoon homes for a dirty, happy child. To seek them out, to move through the outdoors with the goal of a place to inhabit for the day, was to indulge my human joy, and this place never disappointed. Part of the yard was enclosed by a wooden fence with three wide slats and a latching gate. The fence was absolutely overgrown with climbing white jasmine, bundles of waxy stems and fragile, fragrant flowers. Where the fence leaned against the wall of the enclosed garden, the jasmine grew so tall and so densely that I could climb into its glossy arms and sink into an intoxicating embrace. There was a piece of heaven in those exquisite vines. When I looked up, all I could see was the open sky.