And, according to anonymous Columbia University Archivists, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

O captain, my captain. Never in the history of Columbia University has a Sulzberger resident loved the tree in the Barnard quad as much as I do. I am the tortured Gatsby, yearning for her green light, and the obsessive Ahab, stalking my white whale. She is my dendriform Madonna. When I first walked into my room on move-in day, I was immediately drawn not to the small phallic sketches on my wall, but to the tree’s lush, inviting beauty. “Welcome,” she whispered, “to the city of dreams.”

This tree is the muse of the houseplants on my windowsill. She leads them with a grace that I, a human, cannot. They stretch their little succulent arms to her maternal figure, and she shows them the ways of photosynthesizing and turning mysterious colors after being watered with dish-soap water. I think she is an oak tree, though potentially she is a maple tree. Either way, she defies categorization. She exists above the standard arboreal plane. She does not have acorns, that I know of, which I think oak trees have. 

The tree in the Barnard quad is actually one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This was confirmed by a Columbia University archivist who requested to remain anonymous. “Though it’s not widely known by humans,” they shared with a forest-spritely sparkle in their eye, “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually in now—New York City, and the tree outside of Phoebe’s dorm room window is the last of the Garden to survive the crushing torrent of the passing millennia.” 

I cannot wait for her to experience the seasons. She will blaze with the golden flame of fall! She will turn many autumnal colors, and I will document them all in unsolicited pictures that I send to my mother!

As Winter closes his chilly fist around Morningside Heights, she will drop her leaves like tears down a frosted cheek; a hundred withered, crunchy prayers. I will mourn each one with the intensity of my mother’s apathy toward my tree updates. I will befriend the whimsical squirrels that live in her branches. They wink at me from afar. “We’ve been waiting for you,” they say, jauntily tipping their squirrel-sized bowler hats.  

Sometimes, my tree sways in the wind, which lets me know that it’s windy outside. “Wear a jacket today,” my tree suggests with a knowing grin, “It’s a little windy.” Once, she cast a perfect leaf-shaped shadow on my bedspread. A vegetal blessing. “You are blessed,” said the shadow, “with the deciduous kiss of the arborescent mother.” I took a picture to send to my own mother, who has yet to bestow a single vegetal blessing upon me since I’ve arrived at college. 

“I’m not competing with a tree,” responded my mother when I raised this point. And of course she isn’t. How could anyone compete with the bifurcate Goddess who inspired both Shel Silverstein’s renowned children’s book, The Giving Tree, and Betty Smith’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Tree Grows in the Barnard Quad?

Houseplant children and squirrel wearing hat via Bwog Staff