How Falling in Love with Trees Helped Me Heal My Body Mind and Spirit

By: Carrie McClain, Owner of Little Saps  

I grew up in Florida in a newly developed community near Tampa. Just a few years earlier, my neighborhood had been a swamp. Developers carved out a planned community, but wanted it to feel natural, so pockets of untouched wetlands still filled our backyard. 

The families who moved into the neighborhood were from somewhere up north. We were not Floridians; we were not even Southerners. The swamp and all of its exotic wildlife – lizards, snakes, alligators – felt foreign and frightening, so we stayed out of it.

Even the grass chosen for our lawns felt menacing. Like most Florida developments in the 1980s, our neighborhood was planted in thick St. Augustine grass – a variety tough enough to survive reclaimed swampy land. Coarse, prickly, and uninviting – and teeming with fire ants – you couldn’t run through it barefoot or even sit on it to play. 

So, as kids, we learned to stay on the pavement – away from the water moccasins, copperheads, and coral snakes in the backyard, the alligators in the retention ponds, and the itchy grass surrounding our houses. We stayed away from nature.

From Florida, I moved to Chicago. I loved Chicago, but apart from the beautifully landscaped campuses and parks, I once again found myself in a place where nature felt restrained and inaccessible – except for water. I had grown up near the Gulf; now I lived beside Lake Michigan. Vast, deep, open, mysterious bodies of water became my touchstone to the natural world.

The Start of my Journey to Healing my Mind, Body, Soul and Spirit

In 2011, we moved to the mountains of western North Carolina so I could help with our family Christmas tree farm. For the first several years, both my husband – a Michigander who grew up on the other, prettier side of Lake Michigan – and I felt unbalanced and claustrophobic. There were no vast bodies of water nearby, no place to experience the expansiveness and connection to nature that the ocean and the Great Lakes had given us. 

In the mountains, there were only small creeks and a river too shallow and rocky to swim in. We felt lost. Our biannual trips to the coast and our annual summer pilgrimage to Michigan became our saving grace – moments when we finally felt balanced again.

In 2017, I was struggling with increasing anxiety. I could feel the buildup of nervous energy in my body, but I didn’t know how to get rid of it. Running and yoga, my usual go-tos, weren’t helping. I couldn’t sweat it out or deep breathe it away. 

Even more distressing – as a person of faith – I felt disconnected from God. When I tried reaching for Him, something felt blocked. I wasn’t sure what to do.

At the same time, my father decided to build greenhouses to grow our Christmas trees from seed. Like most Christmas tree growers, we had typically purchased field-ready Fraser fir transplants from nurseries across the country. These nurseries specialized in forestry products, and growing Fraser firs for the much smaller Christmas tree industry was more of a side business than a priority. 

For several years, those nurseries overplanted Fraser firs, couldn’t sell them, and eventually stopped growing them altogether. Suddenly growers like us couldn’t buy the transplants we depended on. In response, many growers – including our family – began experimenting with growing our own.

The Wonder of a Small Sapling

We received our first shipment of Fraser fir seed. Fraser fir Christmas trees had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember, yet I’d never seen a Fraser fir seed before. Holding a few in my hand, I remember feeling complete awe that a giant tree could grow from something so small. How was that possible? 

As the seeds sprouted and the tiny trees emerged from the soil, I remained fascinated. Soft with new growth and vulnerable, each little tree was able to overcome incredible odds – weeds, rodents, birds, bugs – and, in their native Appalachian mountains, grow to fifty or sixty feet tall.

In the meantime, a friend suggested “forest bathing” and “grounding” for my anxiety. I knew that studies had shown that spending time around trees reduces stress and anxiety, lowers blood pressure and improves mood. Was that my problem? Was I too disconnected from the natural order?

The mountains of western North Carolina may lack oceans and Great Lakes, but they have one thing in abundance: trees. I had never spent much time in a forest. I hadn’t really spent time with trees at all. My childhood in Florida and my years in Chicago – wonderful in so many ways – had left me unfamiliar with the very heart of my family’s business. 

Even during the six years I had already lived in North Carolina, I had been so immersed in learning a new role – having babies and mothering my young children – that I hadn’t stopped to notice what was around us, much less become acquainted with it. 

How the Forest Helped Heal My Body, Mind, and Spirit

I started going on hikes. Slow hikes. My favorite trail was the one behind our church – a 2.5 mile path halfway up the summit of Howard’s Knob, winding through a beautiful hardwood forest. I became acquainted with new friends – American beech, sugar maple, yellow birch, and various oaks. As I walked, I would run my hand along the trunks of trees I met along the way. I expected splinters and was surprised instead by bark that was soft and pliable and living – real, tangible, solid. 

At points along the trail, I would stop, sit, and pray. Slow prayer. Contemplative prayer. I reached out to God and listened – to the forest, to the gentle swaying of the trees, and to the animals moving quietly through them.

As I spent time with the trees and opened my heart to God, the nervous energy began to dissipate. I felt calmer. I could breathe again. I could feel God’s presence. I felt whole. I realized that what I was experiencing wasn’t just physical calm, but something deeper, a healing that touched my body, mind, and spirit.

Over time, as I came to know the forest, the mountains began to feel like home. I no longer felt claustrophobic. I no longer longed for the sea. I even began to appreciate the shallow river you couldn’t swim in. I learned it is an ancient river – older than the mountains themselves – one of the few that flows north and one of the only rivers that begins and ends in Appalachia, meandering through small communities and many stories, quietly connecting them all.

The Love of Trees that Inspired Little Saps

At the farm, my awe and fascination with our seedlings – and my growing admiration for the majesty and mystery of trees – birthed the idea for Little Saps. I loved growing Fraser firs for Christmas trees and the joy they brought families during a very special season of the year. But I also wanted to share the joy and inspiration that comes from a relationship with a rooted tree – one that you could plant, nurture, and watch grow in your own backyard.

As I’ve often said since falling in love with trees, there is something innately healing and inspirational about them – something awe-inspiring, mysterious, and deeply spiritual. Trees symbolize so much: love, wisdom, hope, perseverance, strength, and courage. 

I think that’s why people are so moved when they receive Little Saps as a gift. Trees mean something. And unlike flowers and plants – which are beautiful, wonderful, and healing in their own way – trees are something bigger: literally, temporally, and metaphorically. 

They are not fleeting. They are not small. They are vast – both above and below ground. They are old, sometimes older than us. And they endure. 

We don’t just enjoy trees. We learn from them. We grow with them. We are inspired by them. So when we are gifted one, it touches something deep within us and we are renewed in our body, mind, and spirit.