Pine Trees & Me: What We Miss When We Judge Too Quickly

When I was a child, I aesthetically hated pine trees. I know - odd behavior for a child, but in my suburban neighborhood in Southern New Hampshire there were almost exclusively deciduous trees, and while I’m sure I’d been around pine trees here and there, I didn’t have much exposure to them. For some reason, I came to the conclusion that pine trees were inferior.

I don’t think being suspicious of differences is necessarily unusual in children. Children are naturally curious and are constantly trying to make sense of the world. When they notice something or someone who seems unfamiliar—whether it’s a different language, appearance, behavior, ability, or way of dressing—they may react with confusion, hesitation, or even suspicion. This isn’t because they are inherently prejudiced, but because they’re still forming their understanding of what’s “normal” or safe based on limited experiences.

My back-of-the-mind opinion of pine trees didn’t change until I moved to Maine for college and started being excited about the ways the world was different in different places. Where I went to college for my first year, many of the other students were from rural Maine towns and had had different experiences growing up than I had. While I didn’t entirely embrace Maine life, I developed a deep affection for the northern New England woods and coastline. This was because of my good experiences making friends in my new environment. If I had had a bad experience, I’m not sure if my loathing for pine trees would have deepened, but maybe there wouldn’t have been any change.

As I got older – past the experience at the college in Maine – I started to give conscious thought to my opinion of pine trees. I realized, when I got back to New Hampshire (where there are certainly pine trees), that my gut reaction wasn’t the same any more. I realized that my distaste for pine trees had nothing to do with the trees themselves. It was a result of not having been familiar with them.

This is how many people respond to unfamiliar situations. People tend to be judgmental toward things they aren’t used to. This isn’t necessarily a logical reaction – it’s a reflex – an emotional decision.

Now that I’m more conscious of my strange (if natural) reaction to pine trees, I am more aware of other instinctual reactions. These have included innocuous things like fashion choices, but also sometimes I have based other people’s worth on opinions I heard about particular professions. I also have dismissed certain books or movies because of their overall genre rather than digging deeper into the meaning behind the material and the skill of the people who created them.

In not giving conscious thought to these gut reactions, I participated in a pattern that’s easy to overlook but has wide-reaching consequences. If something as benign as a tree can evoke subconscious bias, what happens when we meet people from backgrounds we don’t understand?

It’s easy to believe we’re open-minded simply because we’re kind or well-intentioned. But real openness requires effort—a willingness to notice the snap judgments, to pause before we turn away, and to ask ourselves where those reactions come from. The unfamiliar isn’t a threat. Sometimes, it’s just a pine tree.