3:30am July 12, 2014

The name of a tree

If you want to know the name of a tree, you’ll have to listen with more than your ears.  Human is not a language they speak.  You’ll have to listen with parts of you, you never knew you had.

Feel every groove in its bark.  Trace its branches against the sky.  Listen to its leaves or needles rustling in the breeze.  Sit in its crown with your back to the trunk and feel the way the wind blows each branch.

If you want to know the name of a tree, don’t ask me — it can’t be pronounced.  The name of a tree can only be enacted by that one particular tree.  It spends its whole life shouting its name to the world.  Shouting it loudly, shouting it quietly, shouting for anyone to hear.  It’s a rumble beneath the earth, a whooshing against the sky, a creaking, a subsonic rattling cry.  

And once you’ve heard it?  You’ll never forget for as long as you live.  And you’ll learn to listen to the names of other trees.  You might move on to rocks and boulders and mountains.  Or tiny specks of sand.  You’d be surprised how much of the world is shouting its name, and how few people stop to hear.

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