Trees and Gratitude

There is something hypnotically beautiful about trees. Gazing into their green shady depths, witnessing age old truths being whispered to the sky, feeling the breeze fluttering the leaves and caressing your cheeks.

One can only see movement as it affects something else. A silk scarf as a child plays with it, the breeze billows under and around it, beckoning it , invites you to share the wonderment of flight. To feel yourself rise and flutter and whoosh about.

You can see movement in a river, the water swiftly swirling about, traveling this way or that.

Sometimes movement is fast and furious. A hurricane; a sweaty dance on a slick disco floor. Other times movement is slow: a turtle trudging to the food source; or lazy: the grass dipping and swaying in sun-dappled forests; branches dancing and leaves fluttering. The grass waves and ripples, soft with the wind.

Movement is sensual, too: A lover's dance of lips on a moonlit beach. So can sound: a flute mournfully exploring the waves of an ocean following it until it crashes on glistening rocks at the ocean's edge. You can hear movement: soft shoes scuffling across a wood floor or the sound of love being defined in a rumpled bedroom.

You can hear movement, but can you hear tradition? Can you hear it when you are in a forest?

The sound of elven children laughing with sparkling eyes. Hear the solemn wisdom of the nobles, breathe in the hush that settles around the trees.

Forests and trees never cease to cause great rushes of wonderment and awe for me. A reverence falls and bewitches my spiritual core. Letting the spirits in these trees envelope me creates a knowledge of beauty that sometimes I forget. But in the presence of this divinity I awaken to the beauty and wonderment of the forgotten.

A bird soaring and swooping just to feel the wind dance beneath him. A duck floating on the river, not swimming, just floating -- letting the water carry him to his next place. Watching my son sleep, breathing his baby breaths, his little chest rising and falling through his dreams.

Listening to my lover describe a happy moment at work, watching a stranger sit at the water's edge and stare into the beauty of a moving river. Hearing thunder rumble in the distance while staring into the flames of a fireplace. The coziness of tea and candles lulling me into a meditative calmness.

The beauty here borders on the indescribable. There is such happiness and beauty in my life right now that my inadequate human parameters almost can't bear it. Tears threaten to spill over and do sometimes.

Isn't it amazing that there are so many facets of human emotion, yet when these emotions rise to their fullest peak within, there is but one option lest you choke upon them. To cry. It seems a strange way to share great happiness, or to describe the awe at nature's beauty that exudes out of you. What a funny way to honor beauty -- to cry.

I suppose I shouldn't feel ashamed at the literal out-pouring of emotion and passion in the form of tears. It is merely another way of expressing passion felt.

When there are no words, at least there are tears.