A Thousand Things

Since before I have memories, I've been listening to trees.  I remember my earliest thoughts and feelings from the giant Maple outside of the yellow parsonage, my first home of memory and I knew that the tree was not just a thing.  It was also more than a character.  I still don't have a way to express this excess, but I don't need to.

Trees do not speak to me with words - their branches, trunks and roots express something more solid, more intertwined, more gradual and ongoing than words.  The twig-like ends of the branches, the leaves and the needles whisper about transient expressions and experiences.

When my college roommate Jonathan disappeared for a day and a night and returned the next day, explaining that he fell asleep - everyone laughed with astonishment and delight because Jonathon always knew how to suck the marrow out of life in ways that most of us were bashful to try.  I did know, though, what it was like to accept the climbing-invitation a tree makes.  The process is so tentative and yet sturdy,  so careful and inevitable (each of those pairings a way to describe self and the tree during the climb).  That Jonathan found a way to sit comfortably then sleep in the branches has always haunted me with delight.

In these years, I listen mostly at a distance, mostly with my eyes abut occasionally with my fingers or hands.   A single tree will tell you a thousand things about existence the closer you come, the farther you retreat, the longer you look, the more you return.

Please stop listening to this screen and go listen to one of these eloquent giants.

#50thingsofvalue