A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.
William Blake’s childhood vision
In the forest wood, among trees, without a path, trail, road, river, or star to find the way. Surrounded by dense underbrush, darkness and silence. Intermittent light and sound. Sleepy hollow.
A fungal network seethes below, a redwood brain. Musters an army.
An opening created by a fallen log. A fairy ring around an old stump.
Forest air is clear. Filtered by an army of green leaves. Movement slows, crawls. Imperceptibly. Counting time.
Butterflies hover. Redwood roots lock into place. Messengers scurry through acres of mud along a cottony web. An underground network signals lightning, insects, food … danger. Work. Survival.
Water, carbon, oxygen, sugar. Storage. Cooperation. Life’s recipe.
Chemical signals in the air. Arboreal conversations. The social life of trees. They care about each other. Empathy is survival.
The redwood brain in the roots. Redwood nerves, synapses, dendrites. The forest is a riddle, a dark place, a depository of secrets, a home for giants. Enchanted, magical, wicked, scarlet. Salmonberries and lady slippers.
Quiet. To hear. To see. To feel. A world within a world. Balance, family, harmony, interdependence. Roots tap into a system.
Animals, birds, insects, plants, waste, fungi, organisms, soil. Dead wood. Create. Eat. Terrestrial plankton. There is a world in a gram of soil. Miles of fungal filaments at work. Electrical pulses charge through roots. Energy. Information. Memory smuggles in character. Diversity. Growth.
Surprise. To reason, to think. A trees life.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
Trees need their rest. To consolidate. To learn. To wonder. From wonder into wonder existence opens.