Washington, Rain, and Meditations on Trees

So, despite extreme weather conditions, I am alive and well in Washington. This is also the first time I'm posting something before midnight. I don't know if that is significant in any way, but it might mean I might be more coherent than I normally am in these candid, shocking, and wholly uninteresting insights into my tangled psyche.

It was definitely an interesting trip up, but between seeing a car flip over in front of us on the ice and almost losing my car trying to put chains on it, what has been the most interesting to me on this trip so far are my meditations on the tree's in Lindseys backyard.

I don't know why I decided to go outside onto her deck and stare at the trees, but I did. And it's kind of scary when you just let your thoughts wander wherever they please, with no intended point or destination. So here is where they went. There are mostly big, majestic Evergreen trees back there, but there are two dead maples in the middle of them all, and for a while I couldn't keep my eyes off them. Those two images of death in the middle of all this life was a little disconcerting. It might have been because of the lighting back there, or something weird going on in my head, but they looked frightened, almost like they were lifting their branches up to shield themselves from something. And there they stood, gnarled and bare. And there I stood, with the most random of thoughts coming into my head. It was like someone pressed play on an old VCR in my brain, and a fuzzy picture of my AP English teacher came up from the beginning of Seinor year, saying "One of the most important questions asked by all authors, from all cultures, and from all time periods is the question of "How do you face your own death?"

Thankfully, I've already worked through that morbid subject (very superficially, of course) in my last entry, so I won't bore you. I then turned my attention to the giant Firs towering above my head, and my strange talent for making random connections again surfaced, which of course means that my next thought was of J.R.R. Tolkien (hear me out on this one). Trees had a very special place in the mind of Tolkien, seen most vividly in his vision of the Ents in the Rings series; great and ancient beings, who have seen more years than we could ever hope to see. And I wondered what it was that these trees saw as they grew up here in the beautiful woods of Washington; what did these woods look like before houses were built, roads were paved, even before people ever arrived in these parts? What did these woods sound like, without the constant buzzing of lights, generators, and cars whizzing by, with nothing but the sounds of the wind rustling in the trees, the light patter of rain on the earth, and the babbling of little brooks, whispering their secrets for none to hear but the birds and the clear night sky? Call me nostalgic, but shivering out there in the cold, I hoped to God that there was still someplace where it was possible to hear and see something like that. It really reminded me of Dave Matthews (hooray again for random connections) talking about the inspirations behind some of his work; "I can remember sitting out on the edge of the Grand canyon, of course trying to distance yourself from the McDonalds that is peering out over the canyon with you, and Imagining the quiet there must have been, and the people that enjoyed it . . . "

Could any human endeavor ever come close to recreating even that simple view from the deck? Sure, they could come close; songs could be written, photos could be taken, paintings could be painted, sketches could be sketched, but could they recreate the same feelings that you have when you see the real thing with your own eyes and experience it firsthand? The cold on your skin, the smell of the pines, the light mist in the air?

I really doubt that anyone will be interested in reading this stuff, or if anyone reads this thing at all, but if you have suffered this far (whoever "you" happens to be), here's comes the point of all this crazy nonsense. There is something special about actually being among the wonders of God's creation that I forget much too quickly living in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, and southern California in general. I'm going to make it a point to spend more time in that park outside school, sit on the swings, and take a break from the craziness of city life. You can join me if you want. I'm sure the trees and I would enjoy the company.