One of my many works-in-progress has lots of trees, but I'm revealing no more than that. It is an odd storyline that requires full gestation.
I love trees--walking amongst them, resting under them, balancing on solid, old limbs. I'm compelled to touch bark, and find such variety--hard as stone or soft as flannel, smooth as parchment or rough as a pineapple. Sometimes I pick up fallen leaves and keep them awhile. I found one leaf large as a dinner platter, which is now a crisp, curled giant sticking out of a bookcase.
On a couple of walks, I saw these strange tree groupings. The one on the left is an intertwined oak tree with two different palms--date and queen. I don't know how they inhabit the same space so congenially. Each is massive, separate and yet part of a whole.
The picture on the right shows one tree trunk wrapped around its partner in a woody embrace that lasted until someone sawed them down. Did their arms wrap around each other too? Is there a story in this tragic embrace?
Trees ask so little and give much--nuts, fruits, shade, shelter. They can even make rain. They adjust to the caprices of nature, even if they can't always adjust to mankind. Some withstand howling salt winds; others live in deserts, miserly with their leaves and hording water deep within their bulbous trunks.
The variety is amazing. Banyan trees send roots big as elephant legs down from branches. Mangroves grow in water. There are cypress trees in Mexico that were living when pharaohs ruled Egypt.
What would it be like to burrow deep into the dark earth, searching for nutrients, bringing molecules of life from the dark to light? Or to experience the exultation of reaching up, up, up towards the sun and sky. I'd like my life to be as rooted and glorious as a tree. Or maybe, at least, my writings. Are you fascinated or inspired by any element of Nature?
