A Tree's View

My life is slow.  I don't mean boring, just slow.  In a manner of speaking not a lot happens, but when it does, it is enjoyable.  I listen to the squirrels quipping back and forth.  I gaze at travelers passing by. Sometimes they come in groups and sometimes they come alone.  These people admire the river and the rocks and the views, hardly leaving a mark on the land.  They stay on the paths and don't venture out into the woods among us.

I get to watch as the river rushes by.  The birds chatter.  The weather changes.  And every once in a great while someone comes along who stops to appreciate me.  When I was a sapling, growing cautiously atop my rocky mound, there were those who drew me.  They would sit and marvel at the sapling growing from a rock.  I used to love seeing their eyes light up beneath untidy, windblown hair as they put charcoal to paper. 

There was a long time when no one came.  We all talked amongst ourselves, but it just wasn't the same as having visitors.  The humans had forgotten us.  They were busy inventing contraptions to do all sorts of things we couldn't even dream of.

But then they came back.  Humans carrying new boxes.  Flash and smoke.  Something that this one young man carried with him was bulky and looked fragile.  He took his time setting it up.  There was a root contraption that he set his box on before lining it up, taking care to center me in his line of sight.  He pushed a button and then waited.  He was a very patient young man, I was very impressed.  He didn't move for quite some time.  Then he smiled and packed up all his things and carried on.  I never saw him again. 

As soon as the humans had come they left again.  The time passed and we continued growing.  There were rumors that many of our distant cousins were becoming victims of torture and pain and death.  We drooped in sadness.  The rains made us feel fresh again, but as soon as the clouds passed we felt dry to the core.  Happiness was a passing fancy.  In places where rain was frequent multitudes of our cousins fell.  And what did the humans care?  I suppose we are dispensable.  What tree has feelings?  All of us! That is who.  In our quiet edge of the world, we raged.  I was a very angry adolescent.  

Time passed again and soon news of humans caring soothed our wind burnt leaves.  I was older and a little wiser and I had put the past to rest.  I was beginning to learn to hope.  Hope for the humans to realize their wrongs.  Hope that more visitors would wind their ways through our paths.  Hope that I would live to see the ancient age of some of the many great trees around me.  

All of a sudden the gadgets some of the humans began wandering through with were enough to make me shake a leaf in their direction.  They walked through chattering on about whatever life had thrown their way.  The walk was no longer a peaceful thing.  It had become interrupted by gossip and shrill laughter if anyone walked by at all.  It had been so long since someone had stopped to look at me.  They noticed the river or any animal that a person could encounter in the woods.

A great loneliness spread like a plague and we all became quiet.  After so many years, we were running out of things to talk about.  Tragedy would give us something to talk about on occasion.  Wild fires ripping through the woods of distant places, floods, droughts.  All the things no one really wants to talk about.  So we just stopped talking.  Old age was making us more susceptible to the quiet the woods afforded.

I clung to my rock.  Deep down below it, my roots were contented in the soil.  It made me feel majestic on my little hill.  Ever so slightly taller than my fellows.  I felt special.  I grew my moss proudly, surrounded by great fellows with aged friendships that even stood the weather of time.  Years could pass and snow could fall but I continued to stand tall and I reached toward heaven.

I don't know when humanity began to look at us again.  But then suddenly there were tours through our midst.  Young people walking through and quietly talking amongst themselves, snapping photos, as they said, and rather enjoying themselves.  From my rock, I could watch them pass, gazing out at the river, some occasionally bothering to turn towards me for a second.

Then she came along.  She came in a group of people and lingered a little after they had moved on.  This girl noticed me.  I watched her eyes trace my branches as they bent toward the sky.  It had been cold and the drafty wind made her pull her coat tighter.  She had been showing her pictures to some of her friends in the group on her camera.  Backing up a few steps the young girl took a picture of the sun shining through my branches as I clung to my foundation.  She came and sat on my rock and looked out over the river from my point of view.  The picture I watched her take captured the bend in the river and the path below my very feet.  The moss was a vibrant green against the greying of my friends' branches.  The rocks were dark with damp and where our leaves had fallen the past autumn were patches of dark orange.  

I felt sad when she left to catch up with her friends, but she cast one last look back before she turned around the bend and out of sight.  I sighed into the wind with contentment.  But, for a while we trees had something more to talk about.  I especially recall that photograph.  It is engrained in me.  It reminded me of the beauty I've grown up in, refreshed the feeling of seeing something new.  And, it was as simple as a seeing a young girl's perspective of my point of view.



A Tree's View © 2012 Katherine Kovanda