Suddenly spruce

The Spruce trees in our yard are nothing special until you begin to look out at them every morning. Where I live spruce are plentiful. They are dark green all year round, nothing changes with them much. Steady on, they get taller and wider but somehow they seem the same. I look out at them each morning to see the light begin to seep in behind their bows. And I have grown an affection for them, their uniformity surrounding me like a blanket on cold winter mornings. They are a reminder of how much we take for granted. How we feel that certain things will always be there. Those old bedraggled spruce standing quietly in the yard expecting little, providing a safe harbour for little creatures that live below them and nest within them.

This winter I have hooked them three times in large 30 by 30 rugs. Each time I approached them a bit differently. The thick branches moving upwards at times, while others they were twiglike, thin and sparse. The trees of my youth that littered the hills behind our house have shown me their charms and become a sort of muse. Was I not seeing them all along? I have to say I was. Looking at each one individually as I drove down a highway with a million of them acting as boundaries to the side of the road. I always noticed them.

But this winter they offered me a great comfort in their steadiness. Each morning in the dark I waited for them to appear. To see their silhouettes emerge against the grey of the cold morning. They standing there in their heavy coats, stoic against the harshness of the weather. I began to see their worth, and praised them for it. What once seemed a bit dull now had a sudden shine to it. When we see things everyday it becomes easy not to see them at all. It can be easy to forget they are even there. 

And so it is with the spruce tree, the ones I have looked at for all my life. What I once ignored has suddenly found its way into my heart. They have become a meditation for me upon waking. A meditation on the ordinary, a welcome to the day. And this year I am suddenly grateful for them, for their dark and wondrous shade of green that lays shadows on the snow. They are in my yard, in my life, and stand outside my home. No grand sweep of land, just a hill of spruce that have grown thirty feet above me. There they are looking down at me now walking through the winters morning. And they have seen it all. And so I love them for their quiet and their grace.