Toms River 1

"As a child, I talked to trees. My first tree friend was named Thistle. She was an olive tree my parents had optimistically planted in our windy bayfront backyard. Thistle stood graceful and silvery against the huge sky, but her delicate head grew ever sparser as she was thrashed about by the salt-laced wind. She eventually died. There is still a little hollow at the place where her roots were pulled out of the sandy soil.

While I no longer talk to trees, I still feel that they have personalities, and even thoughts, of a sort—wisdom I cannot possess and can only sense with great limitations. That is particularly true in my childhood landscape. Having played in these woods as a child, it's hard for me to see them objectively. Other woods are just woods, but these woods are special. Here, my friends, the trees are scrubby, not human-like at all, and definitely not shapely or majestic. They aren't pretty like Thistle, and they have no ‘heads.’ But I see the entire landscape through a half-remembered haze of childhood imagination, and that's how I have photographed it. I descend into the swampy thickets, which have vines that curl and fork expressively at eye level. I physically move those plants with my own hands, seeking a way to bring the trees and their world to life."

— Ellen Mitchell