Tree of Life

The snow comes fast and with purpose. I spot her through the woods. As I round the trail bend, she is filling a bird feeder with niger seeds, “ For the Americans.” She responds, “Goldfinches.” to my quizzical face. Tiny, yellow-feathered birds flit with anticipation around her.
After, we walk together, heads down against the weather. “When we first came here, we thought we owned these woods, could do whatever. One day there's this very tall, dead tree and we thought ‘let’s cut it down before it hurts somebody’. Then we heard a rat-tat-tat and looked up, saw this woodpecker happily at work.” She stops and points at the dead tree, still there, full of holes, leaning at an ominous angle. 

“I mean how can we 'own' anything? What about the nesting squirrel, the wood-borer, the barred owl?”, she asks, rhetorically.

She walks over and circles the barkless tree with her arms, loving it like a child. “Go ahead... give it a hug”, she challenges. I do it and as my cheek touches the smooth surface, I notice a very large ant emerging from a bore-hole.  “Carpenter ants; at the low end of the chain, not very beautiful until you watch them close up.  I’m blessed. I see so much more of life here”. 

As we walk on she glances back and says ”That tree will fall when it’s good and ready. When it does it’ll keep on being a really useful part of these woods.”

And later, "Controlling nature? Hah! Let it be, folks."

“Thanks for that” I nod, as we part. 

As the snow thickened, her head was haloed by a blur of  fluttering yellow .

a bare tree

old ideas

buried deep