While walking through the woods near home the other day, I got to thinking about how freezing cold it was, and about the trees. Have you ever wondered about trees? What they’re thinking? What they’re feeling? Here’s my take on it. I’m including one of my pastel paintings to help illustrate it.

Winter

Empty, gray sky. And cold. Very cold. I know the sun is out there someplace, but it gives no warmth. I’m standing alone, unprotected, yet … the sap shivers in my veins and tells me I’m still alive. Comforting. I miss the birds, though.

Still, my friends are standing nearby, tall and strong, if also bare and defenseless like myself.  Many of them are not as strong as they used to be. The winters have taken their toll. None of us has much to say, but we can feel each other and know we are still together.

Most of us, anyway. A few have fallen in the past year. I heard the dull thuds as they toppled, felt the earth shake. For a while, they lay randomly, some leaning drunkenly against old friends, some stretched out along the ground, among the fallen leaves and broken branches. The deer nibbled at their bark, the squirrels scrambled over their twisted limbs, not yet crumbled into the earth. Sad, certainly, but to be expected. It was a tough year—aren’t they all?—so some of them were bound to have succumbed to the storms. And some simply got too old and tired to stand. They’re not  entirely lost to the world, though. No. Their spirits, their memories are with me still.

As is the empty nest that clings to my top branches. The little ones are gone, of course. Off to live their own lives, as is proper. They never glance back once they leave me. I wonder if they even remember me at all. Well, that’s life, I guess. In the spring, the hawks will return, to freshen up the old nest for a new family. And so it goes.

The forest is quiet and still, but not abandoned. There is movement now and then, defying the cold. I wonder what it must be like, to propel oneself along on one’s own branches, as those moving along the path are doing. Free and confident. Maybe scary, too. After all, there’s a lot to be said for the stability of occupying one’s own space, surrounded by others who are doing the same, for as long as we can. The beings who matter to us the most stay put. They don’t leave us, not until they disappear, slowly, to become united with the earth from which they emerged so long ago. Safer that way.

Loyalty

Integrity

Strength

Honesty