Monday, February 28, 2011

Seasonal Essay for March

Some years ago I descended Spuce Mountain with windblown sleet splattering my back. The trail was wide and open making movement easy, freeing my mind and senses for other occupations. At a turn, a valley extended to one side and through it came wind which, added to that already blowing, set the trees into violent swaying, even the larger trunks moving almost to ground level. And the noise! The big trunks creaked and groaned. On top of them the smaller branches, hitting against each other cracked and rattled, and above it all the rushing sound of the wind provided the continuo.

It was too compellintg a scene to leave, so I pulled my square of insulated pad from my shoulder bag and sitting on it, leaned my back against a tree. Dark branches against a uniformly grey sky had their own fast beat, but in addition, each tree crown swayed as an entity, each tree size having its own resonant frequency. The effect was that of rows of dancers, arms upraised, each row bending first right andf then left, but in a direction opposite to that of the rows in front of and behind it, each tree-dancer having not two arms but many. I watched until a lull in the wind signaled intermission and as darkness fell I plodded homeward to offer a review of the performance.