Member-only story
Among the Trees
Allowing Nature to Nurture
I once had a conversation with a tree
I had fallen asleep wondering if trees have perception and how they might see us. That night I slumbered in deep dreaming and there I walked up to a tree and very slowly looked up the trunk until my eyes rested on a face. Similar to a human face it was the colour of buckskin and the eyes were dark and large.
I said, “Oh, it’s you.”
A wave of thought enveloped me and inside my head, I recognized the words, “Yes, it’s me.”
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“We’re talking. You asked a question. I’m answering,” the tree said in shorter waves of thought that drifted between us.
“I wanted to know how you think of us,” I said.
“We don’t,” said the tree.
My nesting place was in the arms of a great oak that stood silently listening as I lay limp and weeping, secure in the crook of a branching triad. I was fifteen with a volatile temper and growling moodiness that drove me away from my family circus of incidents and perceived calamities. This was an age when I did not find safety among people.
