Reaching

I believe that trees “think” and “feel” although not in ways that humans do. Beyond my intuitive certainty, I’m sure of little else. I love to walk in the woods but I’m not a student of woodlands or trees. It’s easy for me to imagine the lives of trees but my musings could be nothing more than my fantasy, my imagination.

Having lived in the woods, I have had deep relationships with particular trees. One-sided relationships, true, in that I spoke to them but was not skilled at deciphering a response.

So I walk around this pond and see that the waterline has receded. Tree roots that drank deep from the pond are now exposed, needing to work harder to find the water that sustains them. It’s easy for me to define a moral to this story. But there is much I don’t know and much, I suspect, that people wiser and more knowledgable than I don’t know.

So for now I just look, capture what I can, and work to honor a common but alien form of life.