Finding Friendship
Issue Issue No. 3
Katy Shevel | Friday, July 17, 2026
Did you know trees have friends? Turns out, they do! Well, sort of. In The Hidden Life of Trees, German forester Peter Wohlleben claims that the colorful maples in our backyard and the towering pines in the park are inherently social creatures—more like us than we realize. Eager to explore further, I put my ear buds in and listened to a delightfully soothing British narrator read aloud the words of Wohllenben’s book to me. In doing so, I looked up and considered the trees. Thankfully, I had a spectacular view. Last week, I spent a short time away in Upstate New York. I rented a little cabin in the mountainous forest of the Northern Catskills. As the fading sun dipped closer to the horizon, I cozied up by a crackling campfire. I leaned back in my wooden chair and peered up at the forest canopy above me, drinking in the sights and sounds as I listened to my audiobook. As I looked up, two, lean, deciduous trees above my cabin site caught my eye. They soared over me, growing up and up, in parallel. Their trunks—of similar diameters—couldn’t have been more than three feet apart from each other. They had limited branches on their trunks. That is, until they
Faithful friends are a sturdy sh one has found a trea elter; whoever finds sure.” Sirach 6:14 had reached the clearing above. Then the leafy branches of their crown spread out majestically together, rising in triumph at the approximately same height, side-by-side above the forest canopy I noticed that the thickest branches at their crowns were spreading up and away from each other. They had achieved this remarkable balance of supporting each other in their growth, while also each seeking out their own independent resources for nourishment, such as sunlight. As they grew in parallel, they weren’t trying to crowd each other out or push up against each other in competition. In fact, the opposite was apparent. The branches of the trees at their crown which touched were gently locked together, like puzzle pieces. The two tree friends appeared to be holding each other up, armin-arm, or rather, “branch-in-branch”, in symbiotic harmony. I liked to imagine they were boldly proclaiming, “Hey everyone, we got this!”
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