To Be a Tree?

It may well be, if we but knew it, that the Project of Life in this realm provides innumerable avenues for spirits to escape the abyss that managed to suck them under. That’s at least a plausible hypothesis. Embodied experience may well be the Great Escape—and who’s to say that grasses, plants, trees, and animals are all a huge waste and only we, humans, merit salvation. One of the truly odd aspects of consciousness is that we can only ever experience one being from within—and we can touch others only, as it were, by hints and emanations. An answering smile, a look in the eyes of the other, a feeling of agreement sometimes signal that what I feel is also shared. And sometimes on long walks I get the most damnable feeling of communicating with the trees—and that they communicate with one another too. And that there’s no waste out there at all—and the dog has feelings, thoughts, and dreams. We cannot know what it is to be a tree, but sharing life with them at least hints that they may have their own way—and that it is at least as meaningful as ours.