Love: the Tree ‘n Me

Sitting here along the Danau river, enjoying a wafting array of Viennese sunshine carried forth by the cool winds of spring, participating in a gathering of mutually diverse entities whom collectively share in this marvelous gift of life, I ponder the nature of existence: sentient vitality inescapably bound in the familiar arenas of space and time. The astoundingly green grass, rejoicing in all its organic vibrancy. The boundless breadth of the Blue Danube, whistling timeless rhapsodies along its golden embankments. And poised in its natural serenity, a lovely tree, placidly stretching its tendrils into a hovering pool of endless blue mystery. Concerning this tree: I quietly observe its passive displacement of an indeterminable amount of atmospheric elements, a perfect fit for a setting so precise. Sometimes there’s a tree- well sometimes there’s a tree, and it’s the tree for its time and place...
Inspecting its shape; tall, curvy, branches intermittently extending from its proud trunk. Fresh spring leaves jettisoning their way through a hardened exterior crumbly bark. Its color, a beautiful tapestry of greens and browns, constellations of vivid color playfully oscillating through perfectly defined spectrums of luminescent splendor. The tree, lets say, has weathered no fewer than 60 cycles of solar rotation.
Now, I begin to think… 61 years ago this tree was but a speck of biological speculation. A fragment of phantasmagorical filament. A mere ponderance of a wandering poet. The origins of this tree once hung from a branch of a prior tree, encased in a tiny pocket of seed- no larger than a pebble, quivering, utterly helpless to the wild dances of celestial winds. Then, at the critical juncture, an unknown momentum of cosmic proportion sends it flying away from its home, dislodged from its host of eternal potentialiality. Into the winds of space, the sands of time, the dust of the earth. Buried in the soil, disregarded from the world, forgotten from those who never had a chance to know… The seed lay dormant, whole a swan searches for fish. The seed lay dormant, while the water ripples bit. The seed lay dormant, the seed lay dormant, the seed lay dormant.
Gravity thus taking its toll, the seeds integrity begins to recede, precursory layers of its outer shell begin merge as one with the dark earthen substrate holding its withered spirit. Shivering by the darkness of night, the seeds inevitable disintegration pulses with the timeless rhythms of an incandescent moon. Perspiring by the fire of day, the seed gradually melts in accordance with the sweeping arc of a commanding sun. Nearly at the point of despair, the aged, weathered, decaying seed musters all of the strength it has left in its infinitesimal existence, braces itself for surmounting the impossible, and ZOOMPH!
A sprout.
A sprout!
A sprout?
Where did this seed get the nerve! Where did it receive the wisdom, the fortitude, the material resources to send forth a burst of crisp new life? Where did it get the courage to defy the commanding laws of entropy, slowly dooming its autonomous disposition into the innards of a pervasive soup of dust and stone? Where did it ascertain the guiding principles of life, to set in motion such a miraculous wonder of inexplicable phenomena?
Ok, so the seed has a spout, BIG DEAL; an awkward and tense state of existence to say the least. What opportunities does a tender thought of fresh hope actually have trapped in the hardened dungeon of its withering seed? Sensing the tremors of its own fated demise, this budding aspiration surely despairs of any notions of life to be. Yet the sprout pushes on. Weighing no more than a few grams, the brave sprout summons its intrinsic wisdom in order to further its exterior growth:
“Lets see, first things first… ahh, yes, to move beyond this constricting enclosure of my birth, some sort of rigid encasement no doubt, I’ll just wiggle a bit and slip myself right on out of there- check! Second, must establish the roots. Roots in a rootless world. Roots in the soil below. Roots which shall uphold my eventual development into a multi-ton powerhouse of towering lumber and leaf. Ah, at a loss, am I! What am I to do? Where shall I find the material necessary to implement this vision, extend my influence into such an expansive subterranean network? Resources are a little tight around here these days…”
And thus the new sprout contemplates the daunting task ahead, plotting its strategy. Displaying an elegant brilliance, it proceeds to craft an impossible scheme; an exquisite process of harnessing enriching vitality out of lifeless earth, thus giving substance to its eternally confident vision of full-fledged system of life. It turns out the sprout has emerged equipped with just the precise state-of-the-art hardware and software as to extract plump nutrient vestiges from an unresponsive sea of dust and dirt. And so, step by step, mineral transforms into plant, zinc turns into cellulose, iron into glucose, obliterated rock into vibrant plant.
And this process continues, the sprout eventually emerging victorious from its dim exile underground exile, finally greeting the unknown benefactor who has so selflessly encouraged its hardened plight against the burdensome chains of Newtonian theoretics: the sun. And thus our brave sprout is immediately thrust into the orgasmic process of photosynthesis, the benevolent exchange of abundant sunlight for precious oxygen. And this continues, throughout the blizzards of winter, the sunburns of summer, and the fogs of fall, liveliness of spring, the cars and the joggers and the geese and the sirens, the boats and bridges and the elections and the wifi and the knights who say Ni!
60 years have passed, and the tree now holds itself with the time-honored confidence of an elderly sage. Yet, with this wisdom, it anticipates it’s the inevitable. Another few sets of 60, and this tree will be long gone, embedded in the earth, decaying into shards of dust and sand- and time and space. It will give back its life force to the soil from which it had initially expropriated nutrients from. Soon, it will be the indistinguishable patch of common matter upon which our souls and shoes nonchalantly tread upon from day to day.
And when the process is said and done, when the proud tree I now admiringly look upon completes its transformation from microscopic a flake of genetic potential to a humble clump of indiscernible dirt, I find myself at a loss of words. Perhaps nothing happened at all? Perhaps the tree never was? However, these irritable ripples of doubt soon pass over steadfast stream of mental clarity- tranquility assumes its beaming crown atop 5 flawless kingdoms of order and purpose.
I know you, tree; I have walked your path, I have known your ways. I see the sentient principle within you, guiding the material which passively flows through you. I know not fire, nor water can touch that which dwells in regal harmony at the core of your unquantifiable essence.
I know you live on, marking your existence in the world within the vast rivers of space, the channels of time. I look upon you with confidence, tree- receiving your light with the uppermost realms of my perception. I look and I know, beyond reason, disabling doubt, that you and I- we share something of quintessential profundity, beyond that which any moral creature can conjure. We share the most intimate principle of existence that any living creature can be possibly endowed with. Together, you and me, tree, we are One- in the unceasing Love of the Master of the Universe.