A tree is a person to many of the aboriginal people of the world, each as different in tone, personality and behaviour as you and I.
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Walking around this mountain, I have got to know the trees and their moods. They are one of natures great shapeshifters, one moment a Gothic fantasy, the next a gentle sylvan bower under which to dream.
As I pass, I feel them reach out to touch, to sense, and to listen to the stories brought up from the village below. We are but a short paragraph in a long and rich history to these ancient people, yet they politely listen as would any tribal elder to the excited foolishness of the young.
Most days I will sit and visit with my favourite trees, listening and learning as they draw breath and light into those adamantine limbs.
I have learnt great stillness from my fiends the trees and today was no exception.
Thoreau had his favourites too:
“I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.”—Henry David Thoreau
Photo courtesy of the author