White Pine

The sun rises late in this southern county. And, since the first thing I do when I wake up is go out into the world, I walk here along a dark road. There are many trees…

Isn’t everything, in the dark, too wonderful to be exact, circumscribed?

For instance, the white pine that stands by the lake. .. Everything is in it. But no single part can be separated from another.

I have read that, in Africa, when the body of an antelope, which all its life ate only leaves and grass and drank nothing but wild water, is first opened, the fragrance is almost too sweet, too delicate, too beautiful to be borne. It is a moment which hunters must pass through carefully, with concentrated and even religious attention, if they are to reach the other side, and go on with their individual lives.

And now I have finished my walk. And I am just standing, quietly, in the darkness, under the tree.

Is it only in the dark that we know we are connected in this wonderful world? Like the African hunter, do we turn from this knowing because it would change who we are and how we live too dramatically? Perhaps this is why we don’t go on walk abouts in the dark. For we would become antelope and tree, easily shot and felled by the hunters of night. But then our sweetness, like this morning’s cloaking aromoa of Mimosa trees, would brighten the world with the fragrance of creative grace.

If you could be a tree, which would you be?