Spruce Kiss
I kissed some spruce that day while walking a fairyland forest trail. The kind that thumps hollow underfoot and whose roots shone from thousands of boot soles passing by. The spruce stretched their arms across the path and brushed tips with the trees on the other side. This web of boughs was thick enough to obscure the trail underneath.
It’s rare to feel tall among the trees, but on Newfoundland I did. Their growth was stunted by the wind screeching up the sides of the sea cliffs, this island being the kind of place you picture when someone describes rugged. This rock being the kind you picture when someone says ancient.
So I was kissing spruce on the rugged, ancient path. Trying to find my footing with a mouth full of conifer. Deciding this was the taste of green, were it to have a flavor. With an extra hint of brine given the inescapable ocean always industrious down below. Taking in the landscape with my eyes and my mouth.
The branches sprang back despite my attempts to brush them away. I moved forward regardless, with tentative steps but a consistent progress. I leaned into the land and away from the water with a slightly hitched shoulder, as if that would protect me against a sixty foot drop off the cliffs.
For anyone who has spent time on trails, passing people involves an acknowledgment and a greeting of some kind and after awhile, I thought of the spruce as fellow trailgoers. In Canada, the greeting went “Hello Bonjour” and I liked the idea of speaking in a few languages to acknowledge something living passing by. It’s a tiny nod to the things we have in common out there, whether walking in the same footprints or breathing similar air.
The trees breathe too. Their exhales feed our inhales. We exchange air, so why wouldn’t I greet them? The tree needed to continue to be alive for me to continue to be alive.
I chuckled to myself as I realized kissing is a greeting and a pretty intimate one. It wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t the softest kiss I’ve ever experienced. But the trees were reaching out to me and I acknowledged my body’s passage through organisms just as alive as a backpacker walking down the trail.
That’s worth a hello, or a nod, or a lemony, salty, green kiss on a summer oceanside afternoon.