If anything could be made to stand for the sturdiness and the beauty of friendship, a tree would be a fine place to start.
In her 83 years, Emily Harris has enjoyed many a warm friendship. And to Harris, a farm girl from way back, few of nature's gifts are as beautiful as trees, the gnarled bur oaks of the prairie or the tall pines of the northern forests.
So it seemed not a leap at all one night when Harris, in the dark and the quiet of her old farmhouse, came up with the idea of planting trees on her land to honor her friends.
"Wouldn't it be nice," she thought, "if there were a tree for each one of my friends? A whole row of friends!"
And then, as she has done many times in an eventful life, Harris asked herself, "Well, why not?"
Harris started letting friends know of her plan. Each of them, she wrote in a letter, was being honored on her farm with a tree of their own. Each would have a tag and a name and each friend was welcome to come to the farm to help plant his or her tree.
"Everybody," Harris said, "seemed really excited about the idea of having their own tree."
So last April, out in front of the farmhouse where Harris spent most of her childhood, there appeared 61 holes for 61 trees. And that, she figured, was just a start.
Those who know Harris are not at all surprised by her ambition or her kindness. For 31 years she was a respected teacher at East High School, instructing students in home economics and also running the school-age maternity program for young mothers-to-be. She raised three children of her own. Her husband, George, died in 1991.
Harris' retirement has been anything but retiring. She has traveled widely, combining her travels with volunteer efforts and teaching. She taught English during two summers in China. She just returned from helping build homes and advising schools in Guatemala.
Here, she has also volunteered her time extensively. One of her favorite ways to help is by working as a naturalist at the Jackson School Forest, passing on her knowledge and love of the natural world to young people.
Harris has always felt a special attachment to trees. There is an ancient bur oak in the farmyard that she remembers seeming old when she was a girl.
"Every tree has a personality, a story," Harris said. "When I go out in the morning, I sometimes even talk to my trees. I say, 'Well, hello Bob, it looks like your leaves are coming along just fine.'"
Now, Harris will have plenty more trees to visit. Over the course of the spring, dozens of friends came by to either plant a tree or to check on the progress. Each tree carries a tag with a name. It is a tribute to Harris' tireless travels and to her capacity for friendship that the tags carry the names of people from all over the country and the world.
There is an oak for Su Ren, the young man she befriended in China who now considers Harris his second mother.
"I never thought that one day something would be named for me," he wrote her in an e-mail from China. "But now there is, a tree with my name on it on my American mother's farm."
There is an apple tree named for Simcha Brudnow, a survivor of Auschwitz, who is a friend and teacher of Harris' daughter. There are trees for other friends from Africa, California and Virginia.
In October, Harris hosted a party and a bonfire for all the friends for whom she had planted trees. She invited them to come tend to their trees and enjoy an evening together. More than 50 people came to see their trees, to help water them and spread mulch around their small trunks.
Harris knows she will not be around to see the long double row of trees grow into a stately grove. But she finds great comfort in knowing that the trees will be there, standing always for the friendships of a good life.
"I know we all won't live to see them grow big," Harris said. "But we will be there, really. We'll always all be there together."Wisconsin State Journal
