Tuesday’s World Storytelling Day Celebrates Trees

The vernal equinox on Tuesday marks World Storytelling Day (see also Wikipedia entry).


Each year has a theme; this year’s is “trees.” I can’t recall a beginning-middle-end tree story in my life, but trees have always been important to me. Growing up on a small farm, my sisters and I each claimed three of the property’s trees as our own. Mine included one of the huge, ancient maple trees, an apple tree, and, I believe, a mimosa. One especially idyllic summer, I tied a lawn chair into the branches of the mimosa with baling twine and sat in the chair reading for hours. I was also a huge fan of climbing trees in my youth.

Today I live in a forest (pictured), mostly consisting of Ponderosa pines, so trees have gained even greater importance in my life, and especially that of my husband, whose earliest ambition was to be a forest ranger. Today he is a tree farmer, and we live on a Certified Tree Farm (pictured).

World Storytelling Day is “a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts.”