Once, when I was younger, I visited the Portola sycamore in Carpinteria. That was forty years ago. I was restless then, seeking something grand and green to pull me out of my head and into the world. She stood at the edge of my vision, wide and ancient, like a slow breath made of wood and light.

I’ve returned to her countless times since then. In all seasons, in every mood. I have brought with me my tangled thoughts and my worn-out bones, and she has listened without judgment, rustling her leaves in sympathy or silence, depending on the day.

Years ago, she had bees. They were a golden, humming pulse in the heart of her trunk, a sound like a hymn, low and gentle. The bees lived in the hollow, a soft, murmuring life nestled into the wound of the tree. I remember thinking that they were like memories, swarming, persistent, honey-slick in the mind.

Then, one day, I came back, and the bees were gone. Someone had filled the hole with foam, determined that the bees were a problem to be solved. The sycamore stood still, stuffed with plastic like a wound dressed poorly. I traced my hand along the bark where the foam oozed from the gap, hard and unnatural. The tree seemed heavier that day, tired. As if the loss of her small, buzzing tenants had drained something from her spirit.

Now, when I visit, I feel the weight of her limbs, the slow bowing of her trunk, and I think of how we force things into tidy shapes that please us, never asking what it might cost the world we don’t understand.

She is quieter now, but still standing. Her leaves flicker like pages turning in the wind, and I wonder what stories they hold, how many lovers carved their initials into her skin, how many children climbed her thick arms, how many wandered by and paused to sit beneath her shade.

She has seen it all, generations of settlers, storytellers, dreamers, and those who couldn’t see the beauty in a swarm of bees making a home in her hollow. The sycamore bears it all without complaint, rooted in the rich, worn soil of Carpinteria.

I still visit her. I sit on the ground at her base and feel the gravity of age, the soft murmur of memory. I think about the bees and the foam and how sometimes the things we think are problems are just life doing its work, making its way through the broken places.

She is tired, yes, but resilient. Perhaps we could learn something from her patience, her quiet resolve. I wonder if the foam will crumble one day and the bees will return, humming their hymn, soft and steady. Until then, the old sycamore waits. And I, too, wait, hoping for the wild, buzzing life to come back and fill the hollow.