Why did you reflexively contract when you read that title? Does it go back to the conservative's 70s sound-bite, "tree huggers", a term used (as usual) not to increase knowledge and understanding, but to ridicule and demean, the fear-response of a bullying child? Were you tainted by the bully's threat?

Or does it touch on a sense of propriety which tragically – I have to use the word tragically here, because I imagine you as a child, reaching as a child does into a world of wonder and delight, opening all of the flavors and colors and textures and sounds and smells it offers – tragically, was some bleak "sense" of propriety laid over your heart, like a "black curtain over the windows of your soul", that the brief and agreeable experiment in hugging a tree causes the heart to contract, and inhibition and embarrassment to crowd your mind?

Well, today's model, Bela Schultz, offers a different take on tree hugging, as she stands at the heart of eight enormous trucks which all grew from a single root. While I was adultishly pondering what trauma had caused such huge trees to grow from one root system, Bela was drinking up sun, drinking in the power and the depth of that living thing, and thankfully unabashedly put her arms around the tallest one, which grew like a spire at the center of the rest. How could I resist doing the same? Why would I?

The result is obvious.

I think you should try it some time (when no one is looking).