Aix is the city of plane trees. Of course, Aix is the city of many things: water, fountains, Cézanne. But, in my opinion, plane trees represent all of these themes quite clearly and abundantly. They line all the main streets, noticeable immediately with their distinctive bark patterns. They surround my sit spot, throwing shade onto my bench when the sun shines overhead. Their leaves fall, all over the ground; I step through them and over them as I walk to my bus stop. Today, I gaze up at the canopy of what I think of as my tree, the tree that I’ve been called to since I first found my sit spot. I see the weak rays of sun peaking through the few leaves that remain (it really is winter now). As I prepare to go home for a few weeks, a quick moment of rest before another semester in France, I try to put myself into the tree.
I seem solitary, but I move in ways you can’t see. My roots stretch, reaching through the earth to find sustenance, slowly creaking and cracking as they support my body. My hands reach up to the sky, straining to reach the sun that has now been covered by clouds. My leaves flutter, seeming to move of their own accord as the cold signals to them that it’s time to call it quits, to turn slowly orange red yell0w and then fall, nurturing the ground that I grow in. My roots here in Aix are still growing. I have tried to be intentional about creating a community here, digging in deep and sinking in to my time here. There is room for growth: I find myself tired, often, by speaking French, by being limited to a language that I can’t always use to its (or my) fullest ability. This fatigue makes me want to curl up, hibernate, hide in my comfort zone until it’s time to go home. I am trying to push past this, or at least accept it enough to keep growing in spite of (or maybe because of?) the fatigue, to use that energy to get better at making community. I feel lucky that I have another semester here, even though it’s hard. I have work left to do.
Nature is everywhere, even when we can’t see it. It’s in the image that Aix presents of itself, the paintings by Cézanne that they use as advertising for their tourism campaigns. It’s in the construction, the workers building a newer, “better” version of Aix. It’s in the country, the lavender fields that double as Christmas markets in December. But it’s also easily missed. I think I need to get better at noticing nature, even in places I’m not expecting it.
