the tallness of trees

Ahem. So i have this thing about trees with hollow knots and gnarled roots, this problem with forest paths that whisper when they climb quietly up and around and up and through and into a shadowed hiddenness. It's that these things are irresistible, or nearly, and when i come to them i find myself muted, awed, solemn, surrendered.


I don't like to share these moments, or if i do, it must be silently. It is all hallowed into this one memory in which i am following behind my father, padding on 6- or 7- year-old feet, looking up at his towering tallness that is still dwarfed by the tallness of the trees above him and then the great smoky ridges above those. I'm following behind the great tower of a man who protects me with a rifle and hugs and a handkerchief he carries in his back pocket,


and he turns with his blue eyes wide, his forefinger on his lips, "shhhhh" he whispers, almost silently. "Listen," he mouths. "Look," he points. I see nothing--or rather, i see so much everything i cannot distinguish the tiny bird over there bobbing slightly, camoflaging on the tiny branch, or the squirrel suddenly still with its bright tail commanded still. Instead, i see the leaves, their patterns, the mossy rises, miniature, on the tree roots, homes of fairies and sprites and other will-o-th-wispy creatures.

Today, I wandered through a garden, in the wonder that is Central Park--so far, and not so far i find, from the wizened hills of Carolina. I wander through the conservatory garden, marveling that i so easily forget this rich, loamy, tended wildness steps from my front door. I wander through, having chosen in a calm deep moment to leave the train a stop too soon, to get out and weave first through this, my city park, my very nearly neighborhood park (and the northern part, so close to Harlem, so far from FAO Schwarz or the Natural History Museum, up here, they are families i see. Children i see, growing up in the city, sitting on rocks looking out over a meer where men and their grandsons fish.

Here, i weave, through labyrinthine boughs and paths, considering my own game from childhood (i'll tell a secret here), my secret game in which i seek the circuit by which i come and go seeing every bit of path without passing the same way twice. It's a game that's tied to one specific thing, my mother's old green coin purse. And when i turn and weave these mazes, i remember sitting shotgun, her driving, me sitting with the mountain sun coming in the window and glinting on the bronze of what i now know to call a celtic knot.


I would palm the soft green leather of her wallet, and with the other hand trace and trace the knotwork, my slender mother safe beside me, so i could sink into a tiny wonderland where the maze was tall and i was small, and finding my way through, seeking a way to see every turn and corner, to peek into each "dead" end, without losing momentum, without losing a forward pace, without tracing the same place twice.

These two i carry in me when i walk, when i am led by some deeper dna to still waters and green meadows cropped with great boulders to climb, from whence i survey the greatness and smallness of things around me, the clovers at my feet that i ever search for four-leafed luckies, that i hate to press with my soles, and the great high canopy covering above, the strength of branches reaching out and high, up and up to the great tall sky, while their toes play home to tinies.

Ah, when i am old, i say, when i am wrinkled and toothless and giddy with second childhood, may it first be true that what comes seeping from my soul is kindness and joy and infant wonder, and second, i say, please take me to a garden, and let me sit there. And i will smile my toothless grin and be happy.



Note: Some of the images will take you places.