Second Thoughts

I worshipped this morning in the Church of the Blue Dome, although this morning it was gray.  I realize that once started it is not so easy to leave The Quiet Way.  One only has to look around to be overcome by the mystery of this ancient place we call home.

When we moved to the farm from town eighteen years ago one of the first things I noticed was a large oak tree in the woods southwest of the house.  It was on a little finger of high ground extending out into a deep ravine.  The power line to our house comes up through that ravine so I knew that if the tree ever came down it would take down the power line.  I wondered whether it was tall enough to hit the house too.  I would use the old “artist’s thumb” method to estimate how close to the house it would come.  We appeared to be safe.  I knew that sooner or later that tree would come down.

Several years later I was watching out a window overlooking the ravine as a severe thunderstorm approached.  Suddenly we were hit with a microburst…it looked like some invisible giant stepped on the woods.  I watched as that big oak came right toward the house.  The power lines snapped and the tree landed about twenty feet from the house.  Other than being without power for the next twenty four hours we were fine.

I looked out the same window this morning to see the old stump over in the ravine.  It is slowly crumbling away back to the earth.  The main trunk lies collapsing into the ravine following the same fate.  It beckoned me to come for a closer look.

Beautiful wildflowers, birds, or animals usually attract the lens but this rotting old stump of a once mighty oak is nature too.  It is covered with fungi, bacteria, lichens, and moss.  It is infiltrated by insects and small rodents and has been chipped away at by woodpeckers.  The textures and colors are beautiful and complex.

Our tendency is to want to move old decaying things out of our sight.  I am glad to own a woods where most of the trees struggle into existence, grow as tall and old as their environment will allow, and then succumb age or to weather to return to the soil.  That is after all the natural cycle of all life.