I might be alone in these woods, but I don’t feel lonely. I don’t feel threatened by anything that surrounds me. It feels natural for me to be here among the trees, above the water, by myself.

The same can’t be said when I’m alone in my dorm room or even at home. When I am alone there I feel truly alone. I am always overwhelmed by upcoming assignments or figuring out how to get a good career, everything is terrifying. It feels unnatural to sit at my desk, surrounded by papers, under the fluorescent lights, by myself.

This may be why I don’t feel lonely while in the woods, maybe it is because I can sympathize with the trees. At their home they feel threatened. They have to feel more alone than ever because they are being over taken by invasive species. Trees are being covered up and breaking in the wind due to Oriental bittersweet and almost no one is stopping it. Mile–a- minute is absorbing and smothering the shrubs and small trees we just say ignore it. Our domestic plants our alone. It is unnatural to sit here while the trees across the creek are being strangle, suffocated, and forgotten about.

I connect with these trees the more I think about it.

Elementary school for me was like the forest before humans unleashed new species into it. I was prospering. I had my group of friends and would do everything together. We would play our version of football in the fields, ride around the neighbor, and just not care about the world and its problems. I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. It was a perfect world, and I, like the oak, didn’t have a care in the world. That’s why middle school was a very dramatic shift. It was my first experience with people I had never met and who had experience and stories that I didn’t share.

Middle school was like the very introduction of invasive species into a forest. I became no one, I became lonely. I did still have my friends, but I began to realize that they didn’t care what happened to me, they just used me to climb higher. They were like the bittersweet vines climbing up a tree trunk to get to the canopy and steal all the sun. They tried to push me out of my comfort zone and cripple me while I was just trying to survive. The kids who I had never met before acted the same. No one cared how they affected each other, everybody was just trying to climb to the top of the canopy. Of course, I had to leave and get to a better environment, and so I went to a high school with people I didn’t know. This had the same affect as moving a tree across the country, but with the bittersweet still living on it. I was completely forgotten.

But college is my turning. It is like an environmentalist ripping the bittersweet off a tree to get a glimpse of the trunk of the oak tree. I was being freed. I have people who I can be with and not feel alone. Of course, there are times, where I am sitting in my dorm and the feeling of suffocation come back, but when I am with my roommates my worries go away. I don’t think I would’ve been able to get through this first year if I didn’t have them by my side.

Thank you, Jason and Blake.

Thank you for caring about the tree underneath the mile-a-minute. You make the unnatural dorm room feel natural.

So while I sit in these wood, I know that I may be lonely sometimes, but only sometimes.