A sidewalk horse chestnut festooned in paper wishes.
On the corner of Northeast Morris Street and 7th Avenue, in Northeast Portland, you’ll find a spreading horse chestnut tree in the median between sidewalk and road. It is an impressive tree in and of itself– Portland’s sidewalk trees are notoriously large, thriving in a region that was once all dense forest, and this one is no exception. But this tree stands out not just by size of crown and root, but also by decoration. It is draped in thousands and thousands of wishes.
The story goes that the owner of the house that the tree grows in front of had read about wishing trees on a blog in 2013, and decided to tie a few paper tags with wishes written on them to this tree before leaving on a trip. On her return she found that neighbors had joined in, and that the wishes had multiplied tenfold among the branches. She decided to set out some sharpies, more tags, and some brief instructions on how to use them both– “This is a wishing tree. Please find a blank tag. Write your wish for you, a loved one, the neighborhood, etc. Tie it to a nail in the tree. Read someone else's wish and hope it comes true.”
Over the course of the next decade, the tree would become the bearer of tens of thousands of wishes. Soon there was no more room on the branches of the tree and small nails were driven into the outer trunk, which were also soon covered. Ropes and wires were wrapped from upper branches to the ground, and these too were cloaked. Now, wishes are often tied directly onto wishes. They pile up on one another, mirroring the leaves above. Eventually they also shed, blowing free of their tethers and into the surrounding neighborhood. This is, I’m told, how you know they’ve been granted.
Many of the wishes have to do with matters of the heart– for first kisses, or for joyful proposals, or for love to simply be returned. Other common hopes are health for loved ones who are sick or suffering, or for new pets or friends, or for simple change– from the smallest scope (“I wish for a new hobby I like doing”) to the largest (“I want to live in a world I can find belief in.”) Peace is also repeated across the tree, and is similarly variable in scale. “Peace in my heart,” “Peace in Gaza,” “Peace on the Earth, forever”.
The horse chestnut is not the only wishing tree in the city, much less the world. They are a phenomenon that has gained new legibility in the era of Google Maps and Trip Advisor, but it is an old tradition. This particular shape– a tree festooned with paper tags– may owe origin to Yoko Ono’s Wishing Trees, who herself cites temple courtyards from childhood.
Portland is rainy, and even written with the provided sharpies many of the wishes soon run and streak, becoming faint and then illegible. You can tell their age not just by their position, but also by the freshness of the marks. Many of them are reduced back to aged paper entirely, just waiting to be released into the air when they are granted.
The day I visited the tree it was windy. The wishes brushing one against the other made a sound like water.