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.