Prompt: Your Favorite Tree
The Circle Guardians
I have had many favorite trees in my life. Their lovely lives span the globe.
My first friends were two silver birches stretching up from the wooded hill in back of our house. We never failed to greet one another each morning. I recall both sunlight and cloud goldening and silvering their leaves. The light striped and danced upon their magical silvery trunks.
I check in with them from time to time. It’s nice to stay in touch. It was they who taught me about the root systems of the world and how all are interconnected.
The tree whose photo graces this story is one I met in Berkeley, California. She presides over a particular area of Tilden Park, a short hike from where I once lived. The hill had been sculpted, or so say the city records, when the road encircling it was created. The sculpting, obviously by bulldozer, buried part of the trunk of La Grande Dame, leaving a huge lower limb extending well away, about two feet above the ground. It made a perfect seat for meditation and contemplation of the surround.
As said hill was part of my almost-daily hikes, I visited frequently. Settling bum and back into her embrace, I drank in the wisdom of all she had witnessed in her time as Guardian of this particular Circle. When other trees in the park doffed their summer…
