Texas Madrone

“A limbless tree shades no one.”

- Me (also probably some Chinese proverb somewhere IDK…)

I was walking through McKittrick Canyon with my trail professor, Bev. It’s a long stretch of trail, approximately 8 miles round trip IF you just end it at the grotto, and it curves back and forth over a semi-dry river. Bev says this is the most beautiful trail in the park, which I tend to agree SPECIFICALLY because it’s flat and she just made me do Guadalupe Peak yesterday so my dogs are tired of 3,000 feet of elevation gain. Anything flat is a work of art to me at this point.

Every hike with Bev is like a NatGeo episode; she has so much knowledge of the world around her. The plants, the rocks, the birds, the history of the land. Her and her husband, Alan, are a wealth of knowledge on the area as well as life in general.

We stop in front of an orange-ish bark tree with little berries, a few of it’s limbs are black like frostbite. She tells me this is the “Texas Madrone” tree, which looks beautiful when it blooms. It’s black limbs jutting out from the beautiful canopy. She tells me that this is the highest you’ll find them and that they grow into the limestone rock… always finding a way. A very resilient tree.

As for the black limbs, the Texas Madrone will sacrifice a part of itself during hard times (like droughts) in order to save the entire tree. The whole park is littered with them, jutting out the sides of mountains and rocks. Now I spot them everywhere I go.

You ever take one of those annoying Buzzfeed quizzes where they figure out what kind of “something” you are? “What kind of pastry are you?” “What is your celebrity doppleganger?” “What type of bug are you?”

“Which kind of tree are you?” Or how your girlfriend will ask you stupid crap like “will you still love me if I’m a tree?” (which I’ve never been asked that if I’m being honest). Well guess what folks… I’m this tree.

Would you still love me if I was this tree? (Only semi joking).

Resilient, always finding a way through hard times, always finding a path to grow even in the crappiest conditions. Hell I even sacrifice parts of me just to stay alive too. I mean, maybe that part is supremely unhealthy for humans, but maybe not for trees…

But I need to remember that a limbless tree shades no one. In other words, burning myself out and self sacrificing will benefit nobody in the end as there will be nothing left of me to give to those who need my shade the most.