I love to gently run my hands through the prickly greenery of nearby trees whenever I pass by needle clusters adorned with woody pinecones. I’ll rub my fingers between the flora attached to twigs, and sniff the deep fragrance associated with the winter holidays. For me, the fresh pine smell is another free perfume sample in the natural mall I call a hiking trail, and it’s one of my favorite things to do as I ascend toward the clouds along the steep, rocky paths that lead to what seems like the top of the world.
The evergreen giants stand proudly over passing hikers, and sit humbly under the warm lantern of the sun. They congregate in numbers to give birth to forests, and they soak misty coastal fog and cool pools of rainwater to grow to immense heights. They become gentle giants and reach ages unfathomable to humans, all while watching the world around them go by. They stand the test of time, surviving fire, floods, mudslides, earthquakes, and people, and never lose their brilliant deep shade of green.
As a writer for many years, I was often asked to produce evergreen content. For the publishing editors, lawyers, and marketing executives I have worked with, that meant they wanted work that would stay fresh, useful, and active over a long time instead of becoming irrelevant. They took the word evergreen from plants that keep their green leaves all year and turned the natural concept into business, media, and legal terms to describe things that don't get old or expire.
This has always stuck with me in my own writing and encouraged me to create useful pieces of art that withstand the test of time like the tall redwoods and other evergreen trees that towered over me. To produce something forever meaningful that can be carried on for years to numerous audiences. Something that a vast majority of people could relate to and connect with. This hasn’t happened in the years of writing and sharing my thoughts and stories publicly. No one clamors to read my words or reaches out to say my lines of prose moved them, but I’m able to look back at my own library of work that spans decades and pull meaning from it myself.
I have more than a dozen diaries I have filled over the span of more than 20 years, documenting thoughts and feelings from childhood to now. Scores of pages blotched and stained with ink cementing my existence on pieces of paper made from trees. The answers to why I think how I do, who I am, and how I have gotten to where I am today live quietly in the tomes made from wood pulp. They have become ancient texts chronologizing me and the life that has developed in the world around me, preserving historic events like the living trees do as they continue to grow.
To be truly evergreen for me is to be forever relevant in my own life and to carry me through difficult times. It’s to be useful to myself as I can refer back to any period of time and study the old pieces that currently make up the complexity that is me. My writing may not rise to the top of bestselling lists or reach millions of eyes on popular online platforms, but my diaries, past articles, magazine pieces, books, and shared thoughts are among my most prized possessions, and I will forever be immensely proud of them. To me, my personal writing is evergreen like the unwavering, long-lasting, quiet giants standing proudly in a sea of other trees.