Saudade: This Portuguese word specifically expresses the longing that accompanies missing something that has been lost or is out of touch. Saudade is an accurate expression of what I’ve been feeling for the woods I grew up in, wandered in, played in, walked dogs in, rode horses in, and got lost in. I hadn’t realized, or had been afraid to acknowledge, the extent to which they nourished my work even as I rarely mention trees or woods or even the outdoors in my stories.
For the last decade or so before moving here, I reveled in the moment to moment changes at Holcomb Hill, in meadows emerging from winter into spring, erupting into summer, and settling back into fall. I felt a hunger any day there hadn’t been time to take the dogs there. On winter mornings, I’d put cleats on my boots to take Eddie and Butch and then Annie to the icy fields, even if it was too icy for them to go very far, just so I could see the sun gleam across frozen, untouched expanses. How I miss that.
Years before, while still living in the city, I kept a horse at a stable in Westchester County. I’d get up on weekend mornings to ride in Pocantico Hills, a vast park, to explore its hills and paths on horseback, a huge tract of woods with ponds and fields and trails, sometimes lush and green, sometimes red and gold and orange, and sometimes white with snow.
During the winter, after a fresh snowfall, I’d get up extra early, to be the first with my mare through the powder. It was exhilarating. Like nothing I’d experienced in my life, and like nothing I’ve experienced since.
As a child, I played in a nice patch of woods behind my suburban house, a patch that seemed as big as a world to me, with my secret forts and cottages and stories. Summers, I’d visit my grandfather and roam in the woods behind his house. Later, I sometimes drove north from New York City when the maple sap runs in March, to meet my father at my uncle’s, where they were doing the hard work of gathering that sap and boiling it into maple syrup.
In Connecticut, on simpler days in my writing room, I’d watch the sun play through what I thought of as my woods, the more than two acres of woodland I could see from where I sat, as the sun stretched at low angles across trees’ knees and thighs as the morning began, rose along their chests and arms through the day, and, sinking towards sunset, left the clouds high above their heads pink and gold. How I miss that.
There is something wrong with the trees here. Their bark and branches and crowns don’t look right. I’ve tried to like them. I’ve taken their pictures, sat under them, drawn them. But come on. Is this tree not crazy?
Are these even trees?
Except for one, they’ve disappointed me.
This one, an ancient fig, with huge roots that extended some forty feet in interesting patterns, and with branches arching so widely a concert was held under her last year, was destroyed last fall in the hurricane. I haven’t been to the gardens where she lived since.
There is so much right about Portugal, I don’t like to complain. I hardly seem like a nature person, and some parts of me are quite urban, so I’ve mostly kept this saudade to myself. But it’s been leaking into conversations, and leaking into dreams. I even began to think I’d have to find a town other than Coimbra, a more rural town, a greener town, to at least attempt to satisfy the yearning.
Last week, I ran across Mary Oliver’s poem, “Mangroves”, written after she’d left her northern woods for Florida. I almost laughed.
About the mangroves, she says, “Mostly I walk beside them, they discourage entrance.” And,
The black oaks and pines
of my northern home are in my heart,
even as I hear them whisper, “Listen, we are trees, too.”
Okay, I’m trying.
I know what she means.
Last Sunday, friends took me for a ride through Coimbra surrounds where in fact I’d been some months before and guiltily thought, ‘nice, but . . .’, or, in Oliver’s words, ‘Admiring is easy, but affinity, that does take some time.’
During the latest drive, keeping her poem in mind, I sat back and recognized the very different drama of Portugal’s countryside. I’m not drawn in yet, I didn’t long to get out of the car and explore the paths, but the poem’s last line resonates, as the mangroves speak to Oliver:
We are what we are, you
are what you are, love us if you can.
This poem extends to more than trees, of course, to place and people, to culture and identity, but for now, for me, it’s trees. It’s helping.
I so enjoyed this—that ache for landscape and trees—familiar ones, new ones.
Thank you, Susan.
I am glad to know that a word exists for that feeling of missing/longing for a certain place or type of place. We are such place-centered beings! The longing for me is the wide expanse of a horizon, punctuated by mountains (*real* mountains) in the distance, the place where I can watch the sun rise and the moon set and where so many constellations provide an umbrella on what are usually clear, crisp nights. That is the place where I can breathe deeply and feel centered.
Oh, yes, of course you do. For a different landscape. The feeling is painfully, beautifully real, like music.
This is so beautiful, E.V., and oh, how I can relate as I made my way from Connecticut to the heat of the South. Trees have always spoken to me, and as I finished your post, I felt the ache in my heart thinking of the magnificent 135-year old copper beach tree that used to help me find my answers, and that I left behind for others to love. Thanks for this touching story.
Thank you, Marsha. I thought of you when I wrote this, and your marvelous paintings of this remarkable tree.
Love this, Linda! Perhaps it’s worth coming back for a visit? Hope your writing is going well. I am diving back in after years away. Onward…
I was close in December, but D.C., not New England. I’m thinking I need a Thoreau sort of visit!
I sort of feel an irony about this subject because I recently had an opportunity to go back to a place that had I had lived for 20 years and it was such a shock, the feelings I had while there and the desire I had to return to what now is my home. I’ve always loved the woods, nature, walking running there and where I live now gives me easy access to this in a much safer (I won’t be eaten by bears at least) setting.
I have yet to see a coyote here either — the ones who used to threaten to scoop up my pets! I have faith I’ll find a satisfying substitute. Plus, no snow or ice or dangerous driving conditions, no below freezing temperatures for days on end, contributes to a different sort of bliss.
You have a beautiful way, in your writing, that both allows entry to the reader, into your inner world of joy and longing as well as allowing the same to discover and become awashed in their own emotions conjured by the images of your memories and experiences. As I prepare to leave my own beautiful paradise that has forged my own set of experiences that have shaped me over the course of half a life time, you cause me pause in what I am about to do. But if we were the humans that were content to remain where all is known, and safe, simply because it’s beautiful and we are at peace in those places we would never yearn for what’s next. For many, perhaps most, contentment is the goal. For others it can be a slow death. For some of us it is the risk, the relocation, the embrace of something unknown that requires deeper investigation in order to assimilate it and in so doing, change us yet again, allowing us the growth and transformation, that our spirit and our creative endeavors demands.
It seems like your are in the second stage of a magnificent love affair. The initial passion that was intoxicating has cooled and your waking to a lover, hair askew, morning breath, who has just farted. They do not seem quite as beautiful, quite as sensual as they were earlier on. Do you keep them? Here the work begins to find the deeper truth of who they are; you are hoping they have some appeal, something not immediately recognizable that will tether yourself to them a little longer and command the urge to discover more that may lie beneath the surface and perhaps rekindle the flame and perhaps fan it into a blaze. Will those trees remain stubby and an eye soar or will spring bring unanticipated beauty.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. During my first visit here, while looking at Portugal from the windows of trains, I saw that the landscape would work against me. My visit was very much like a blind date, so it’s more as though my date had a peculiar tic: I was already asking, can I live with this? I decided I could, and I have no regrets. A Portuguese friend says that my ‘sentes saudades’ — my feeling this particular longing — shows I am acquiring a Portuguese side!
For me, this saudade for stones. Not able to put words to why they have such a place deep inside me. Until now, living in the Deep South of Louisiana where there are none, feeling the indescribable ache. Now, thousands of miles from my birthplace, I feel welcomed home by the stones.
You certainly have an affinity for the landscape here. Think how you would feel if you had to leave it all behind.
What a fantastic offering of words , home , and what contributes to an artists work . Your writing is like a soothing , exciting , fulfilling , soul touching experience ! In an amazing way your words do for me what your walks and adventures in the woods present to you . How grateful I am to be enriched by not only your novels and short stories , but also these awesome missives from abroad ! Thank you. As I age (mature ?) the urban , inner city lifestyle is not as appealing as it once way . Odd , as a younger person , I would take time out from my cherished urban life , to visit beautiful arenas of nature . Now I hope to live somewhere beautiful , lovely vistas and TREES , and take a break to enter all the stimulation of a city . Your bold life choice are paving the way .
Thank you, my dear, dear friend.
EV what a lovely piece. So often in your writings I find familiarity and a sense of discovery at the same time. Aah the woods for me were never so appreciated until I thought to move to Austin. The trees in the “ hill country” were more like twisted, gnarled old men searching for the light. After 4 months there, you might recall, I returned to New England. In renewing my nightly reverie watching clouds and the moon framed by treetops backlit so wondrously, I recognized my own saudade. Your prose is flowing and suggestive: “ … as the sun stretched at low angles across trees’ knees and thighs as the morning began, rose along their chests and arms through the day.., “. Hmm lovely.
Thank you for writing. And sharing.
Thank you for this, Margarita. I’ve since found some trees to love, and some meadows and open fields. Not out my window, and not in my neighborhood, but within driving distance. Even from here, thinking of these, I feel relief.