Entry #2: Winter Thunderstorm

Carolina Beach, NC

It's thundering and raining, and I'm hunching underneath the magnolia tree in my front yard. It's a lazy thunderstorm rolling slowly overhead with occasional growls every few minutes. The kind of storm you imagine in the cooler month of January: chilled out, muted, even sleepy. Not like the raging boomers of summer that my father calls "Frog Stranglers."

I had anticipated I wouldn't need an umbrella beneath the magnolia's evergreen canopy. I thought the broad leaves would surely halt the raindrops in their free fall from the sky. But after a short while standing bare-headed beneath the tree, I begin to feel the presence of the rain. Cold drops of water plop on my head, trickle down through my hair, cool the skin of my scalp. As rain falls through the canopy, it also lands on a thick layer of dead leaves. The drops strike the brown leaves with loud rapping sounds as if each is a miniature drum. Tiny pools form in the folds of overturned leaves. Decaying magnolia cones, some gnawed by squirrels, lie scattered across the leaves. Though usually light brown, the wet cones wear a hue closer to dark chocolate. Rivulets of water stream down the trunk, creating streaks of dark green where algae grows on the northern side. A flash of lightning flickers between the leaves. As I wait for the thunder, I feel hidden from the storm--as if it can't possibly "see" me here beneath the grand magnolia.

This is a familiar feeling; I've been hiding beneath magnolia trees by entire life.

The first southern magnolia I ever knew grew in the front yard of my childhood home in Raleigh. My parents planted it soon after they built our house in 1966. From the start the tree was destined to remain somewhat stunted because it was planted near a mature willow oak. It wasn't long before the oak's branches began stretching across the top of the young magnolia, blocking some of the sunlight. You see, magnolias are not really understory trees; they prefer to receive their sunlight full on. Even though the tree was small for its age, it grew in the normal fashion of magnolias. The lower branches reached for the ground, creating a cozy hiding place beneath the tree. After school, on Saturday mornings, whenever I felt the need for a secret hideaway close by, I found refuge under the magnolia in my front yard. It was there I read books, or peeked through the leaves at the neighbors passing by on our street, or mended the little wounds received during the course of childhood.

Over time, one forms a lifelong bond with a tree that offers this kind of shelter and companionship.

Fast forward twenty-five years to March, 2000. One morning I was walking our dog through the streets of our Carolina Beach neighborhood when I noticed a certain house for sale. My husband Terry and I called it the "Magnolia House," for it was surrounded by three gigantic magnolias. We made an offer on the house that very day. We moved in with our daughters two months later. Although we loved the house, I know we bought the property because of the magnolia trees.

Today I stand beneath the grand magnolia feeling safe from the winter thunderstorms of my life. Here, there exists a temporary refuge from worries about deadlines, my job, my grown children far away in California, my aging parents in Raleigh, the brevity of life. For a few moments I can listen to raindrops drumming on the dead leaves, the occasional passing car along the street, the sound of the departing thunderstorm now moving east and over the ocean.

When I was younger, my mother told me that when it thunders in winter, expect a snow flurry ten days later. I'm not going to stack the firewood on my porch just yet, but it's fun to imagine this southern weather myth coming true. Given that our house sits on an island between a river and an ocean, the moderating effects of the warmer water make snowflakes a rare occurrence. If and when snow does fall upon the grand magnolia, I'll be sure to watch for flakes from my secret room beneath the tree.

Entry #1: Magnolia in Moonlight

Carolina Beach, NC
sixty degrees and cloudless sky

It's almost midnight and I'm leaning against the trunk of a tree in my front yard. Not just any tree. A magnolia tree, a southern magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora in the binomial language of Linnaeus. Even though I'm only 20 yards from my front door, I feel like I'm in a tropical rain forest: An evergreen wall of leaves encircles the trunk, enveloping me in nocturnal dampness. On this balmy January evening, I'm listening to the breathing of the night. Beyond the faint dripping of water from the leathery leaves, I hear the Atlantic Ocean less than a mile away. The muffled sound of crashing waves carries up the quiet street. I place my ear against the scarred trunk to listen for the inner workings of the sapwood just below the bark. It is tempting to imagine I might hear a heartbeat. But only silence from the xylem. After all, it is winter, and the tree, though it supports thousands of evergreen leaves, is in some state of dormancy.

I must tell you this tree is a grand magnolia indeed. If one approaches my yard from the west during daylight, the tree appears on the horizon as a rumpled mountain of green. At first it seems a trick of the eye, this emerald cloud soaring 60 feet towards the sky, spreading outward into a circumference of 200+ feet. My house, a one-story brick ranch, cowers in the shadow of the tree; the branches reach for the roof.  You can almost hear the roots burrowing through the sandy soil, lifting the house from its foundation. 

This arboreal giantess wears her leafy petticoat all the way to the ground. Planted in 1957 by the original family who built the house, the magnolia never felt the blades of saw nor shear. Unlike many other magnolias pruned to create an open space around the trunk, the tree's lower branches were spared. Sixty years later, a verdant shroud encloses a secret room beneath the tree. 

I have known this tree for 17 years since we bought the property in 2000. And always I have wanted to learn more about its life. How does it spend its days, really? What does the tree "think" about through the seasons? Anchoring a small, but intricate ecosystem from the fungi intertwined with its roots to the crows that feast upon the ripe red berries in the fall, how does this tree stand up to all of this activity? The only way I can begin to know more is through a patient and enduring interview with the grand magnolia. I'll start with a year and see how it goes. Maybe I'm up to the task of asking the important questions. Or perhaps I'll simply languish against the trunk, paralyzed in the presence of such a magnificent organism.


Tonight I am here under the light of the full moon of January. I tilt my head to view the canopy. High above my  head I spy purple windows of sky peeking between the leaves. The moon is climbing the dome of the eastern horizon. A shaft of moonlight angles through the branches and lights up the ground near my feet. For a moment I reach out my hand, allowing the light to fill my palm. I think about my daughters, now grown and living in California, and how they built forts beneath this magnolia when they were young. They climbed the tree to the uppermost branches to see the gray ribbon of ocean at the end of the street. 

Looking up at the grand magnolia during daylight.

I open and close my hand around the moonlight. It is pale and slippery, impossible to hold for very long. With one last look at the moon through the canopy, I bid good night to the grand magnolia and slip out between the branches.