Empatree
Sitting cross-legged on the deck, hands in my lap (left lying flat in the cup of my right), a wool blanket draped over my shoulders, I opened my eyes after meditating and waited for them to adjust to the intricate other-than-darkness.
I looked at a tree (a fir, a pine, I don’t know) standing tall and skinny. At first I just saw it and glanced away, but then I looked back and felt the connection that one living being feels with another. I imagined what it would be like if I were wearing the tree’s bark and standing in its roots—enduring storms, bending in the wind, drinking rain, drying in the sun.
All the nature around me: trees mostly, the mountains in the distance, the sky above—all seeming to be still, appearing as an unmoving picture, but really growing and living, just at a much slower pace than us fast-livers from the city are used to.