Sitting under a tree, next to a stream. The river flows over the rocks, voicing sounds of people who have come to collect it to drink, from long ago. I turn my head to look, to confirm that it is only the sound of water cascading into the crystal pools and not the gatherers, as my senses made me believe. The long stem of grass between my teeth, fibrous from chewing the moisture from its core, sweet and reminiscent of my childhood days, when father told me it would take away my thirst. A trick I realised he used, to keep me still when otherwise my mouth would be asking questions, inquisitive and impatient. How mindful a stem of grass can make you when thoughts linger in contemplative moods brought on by silence, while sucking.
A robin scurries in the underbrush of the trees lining the stream, while the leaves of the tree provide perfect camouflage for the beetles and bugs, making work of breaking up the bark of a fallen elder, already part of becoming something else again.
I drop my head back against the trunk of a large yellowwood, while gazing up at the branches, leaves sparkling in the warm afternoon sun. A tingling sensation in my toes, probably from the stones I’m sitting on, cutting of some blood to my feet, but I feel a strange sensation, as if the tree wants me to experience what it is like to have roots. I greet it as an old friend. One that gives me shade and air. With my back flat against it, I place my palms on the rough bark, stroking the texture with my fingers till finding a resting place for my hands that makes maximum contact. As much of me against the old one…
Ah… A sigh, as I relax and breathe out all thoughts of anything else. And then. In a moment of no thought, I am one with the tree, rooted in the ground, reaching up to the sky. No feeling in any part of my body but all at once a sensation of togetherness and enormous capacity in the cavity in my chest. The tree is in me, and I am in the tree, Inseparable, never apart, as if we have been so forever. Closely resembling the joy of a child running down a hill with no way to stop, knowing that if you attempt, you will fall, and knowing that if you continue you will also, but screaming laughter, out of breath, like a ray of light, released from the sun. Joy concentrated in a split-second that can last a whole lifetime…
They are my brothers and sisters, the growing things…
Much love
Harry