This Be the Place: A 300-Year-Old Oak Tree

One of the most distinguishing traits of an exile is also the most painful one: there’s no returning home. As Palestinian American writer Edward Said put it, “exiles are cut off from their roots, their land, their past.”

My mother died in April of 2021, in Caracas, Venezuela, just as the world was beginning to stir after a long and haunting silence. Far away from family and unable to participate in collective mourning rituals, I turned my grieving into a physical practice of connection and kinship. I walked the streets of my neighborhood in the College Area of San Diego every single day. The names of plants, flowers, trees, and birds popped into my head along with memories of my mother showing us how to care for the land and for our plant and animal siblings. In the ravines around our neighborhood, she’d prop up weaker plants with stakes, so they were supported as they grew, and check on them periodically, softly whispering words of encouragement. Every week, she’d save overripe fruits for the local birds. Our balcony was a kaleidoscope of bright colors and sounds.

A few months after her passing, I began to visit a 300-year-old live oak in Mission Trails Regional Park, northeast of San Diego. The tree’s location is a popular spot for families with children, hikers, and anyone seeking respite from the heat and sun. The branches not only extend overhead but also find footing on the forest floor. The trunk is as thick as three people—if they make a circle and put their arms around each other. I think of forest nymphs dancing and holding hands, imagine them disappearing into grooves and hollows until the park empties of visitors and night creatures roam the trails.

When I stop outside the fringes of the huge canopy, I let the tree know about my presence before making contact by closing my eyes and whispering words—hola, ¿puedo acercarme? hello, can I approach? I find a perch and let my whole body be held and comforted by this ancient being, as the wood creaks and silver-bellied leaves crackle. The bark is silky smooth. Names and dates have been carved on several branches: some new, some already softened by time. I trace the letters softly, ask the tree if the scars still hurt, if there’s anything I can do. I don’t expect a response, at least not one I can translate into words. But the presence of this ancient being comforts me. I feel closer to my mother here, to my homeland, and to the simple rituals and practices that deeply connect us to the more-than-human world. I remember my mother talking to her plants, singing softly or humming, polishing their leaves with a mixture of water and vinegar and telling them how lovely they were. She cared for them without asking for anything in return, an act of reciprocity and understanding: the one is the whole.

I wonder if the oak can tell the difference between one human and another just by the way they touch. Are our finger pads as unique to a tree as our scent is to a dog? My mother’s plants responded to her voice by perking up and growing healthy leaves and stalks. I am, very slowly, learning how to care for the plants in our yard, to know when water is needed, when sun or shade will allow them to thrive. I talk to them too, tell them how beautiful they are, how happy I am to be sharing the world with them. When my mother was alive, I never thought to ask how she knew what each of her plants needed. Now, as I grieve, I try to connect to these parts of my ancestry, following my instincts, but also listening and observing, letting the plants guide me.

What the oak has taught me is that sometimes an open wound—physical, mental, or emotional—can be an entry point that allows us to examine the complex relationships we have with ourselves and with the world around us. It is a pathway to healing. Most of my writing delves into the wounds created by exile, by the loss of home and of loved ones, by displacement and disconnection from the land where I was born. There’s a phrase we use in my culture that is part of the grieving process: recoger los pasos, which means to retrace one’s steps, to re-remember and honor the past so we can live fully in the present. I live far from my roots, but I firmly believe this land where I now live is deeply connected to the one I once called home—by the roots of trees, by migrating species, by the mycorrhizal networks that expand and weave entire communities of living beings under the earth. Without borders or human-made boundaries. Under the oak’s canopy, I feel I’m home.