Good Things Come In Trees

I stared up into a tree I had often seen but never looked at. 

Until now.

I followed the arching grace and curve of its shimmering trunk and extravagantly naked lower branches. Multiple ringed arms reached up to hold aloft its rich canopy of a myriad yellow-green leafed open parasols, lit expertly from above by the day’s still ripening sun. 

I gazed for the first time at the algae and moss adorning the trunk and thickening branches and brushed my finger tips over the raised braille of the deep yellow lichen clinging to the burnished wood. 

In the loud silence of this still morning, I fancied I could hear the whispering thrum of nature feasting on its abundance. Making the most of these long dappled hours of summer radiance and clement, soft-breezed skies. 

And this tree, standing alone, but one of a column of five adorning the little stretch of green across from our house. Drinking in every ray and slaking its thirst on sudden outbursts from darkly sullen clouds. 

A living thing. Still growing, and breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen, as they told us in school long ago, when I was sapling green and  slender of trunk.

These are living too, these organisms embellishing and embossing the wood’s shiny surface. Adding colour and texture to bough, limb, twig, shoot and offshoot. But functional too, agents of photosynthesis, harnessing natural energy from above, converting sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into sugars for energy and accelerated growth. 

Every fibre of this marvellous thing we call a tree bursting with life. Each molecule discrete yet subsumed to combination. All drawn in uncontested unison to the celestial orb above for sustenance and for continuing existence. Each surge and wind-ruffled shimmer a soft-lipped prayer to this god of light and life. Each branch and limb filling out to slow maturity and peak of evolution, birthing more and more leaves for its ever-expanding canopy, which will only halt at its pre-destined boundary — if allowed that.

What shade and cooling sanctuary this tree provides too for sheltering or sweltering children. What refuge for visiting or nesting bird. What food for buzzing bee scouring it for pollen and nectar.

With boyish eye, I expertly weighed up the twist, heft and efficacy of each branch. I identified the best first hand and footholds. My boy would have heaved himself up without resort to deeper breath, and scrambled all the way to the top. Leaves would quiver and branches bend to his bidding. Gravity and ground vanquished. Springing weightless from limb to limb, his own lithe limbs, sapling arms and grappling finger shoots a synchronised blur of perfect will and joyous execution. He would reach out then beyond the farthest leaf and limb, tree conqueror and boisterous explorer of things I can but ponder now from my earth-bound enchantment.

There are other ways to climb, this boy would learn, and different mysteries to conquer. Emotions to be recollected in tranquility later, as Wordsworth observed. Maybe now is the time.

I wonder if this is what writing can give you … the locking of a fleeting moment into eternity, to be preserved in the amber of forever. The kid scaling the tree is only ever in the moment … living it … and he doesn’t think about it, just does it. Then the moment has passed. Is past. Gone.

But not forgotten.

And now, on this page, I can revisit that moment as I wish, go there again and again, shift my gaze and my perspective, revisit, reimagine, refine and, yes, reinvent.

You only get one shot at the present, but as a writer or photographer, maybe, you get as many shots as you like.

Or maybe, writing is a way of extending out the present. Otherwise it is only memory. Or memories, images in a book, or in your head. Pictures to scroll through, flatly. One dimensional. And you’re wondering was I ever really there there?

Of course the kid doesn’t think like that. Is he here? Was I there? Of course he is and I was. Stupid question!

Funny these little moments of cosmological contemplation and remembrance that come upon us in the least likely moments. 

For years I have passed this tree and considered it not. Couldn’t even tell you what species it is. I had only stopped here as my dog sniffed a moment at its roots.

You just look at the obvious differently sometimes, don’t you?

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