If A Tree Falls In The Forest And No One is There

We have had MONSTER winds! The trees have been having nightmares. We have to hold on to heavy things or we'll blow to Kansas.

Today we did a little hike at our most usual place - looking for this year's owl nest. At two points along the way, trees were down across the path, thanks to the mighty winds. That is why I don't like hiking on windy days. You never know when a grandfatherly tree might kick the bucket right on top of you!

(Sorry for the poor quality. I took this with my cellphone and this is the best I could do.)

My closest call came a few years ago when I was hiking on a windy day and a pine fell across the path not long after a friend and I passed it.

Funny that I don't put too much thought into getting into an accident while driving, but I stress about a random tree hammering me into the earth. That seems a little backwards when I consider the statistics. And the fact that if I had a choice, I'd choose to be one with the earth over being intimate with a hunk of metal.

Oh, and we may have found a nest. The problem is that it is very, very high, so we can't see into it. We could tell that owls are either living there or using the nest as a vacation spot, because at the base of the tree, below the nest... well, there was some fascinating owl poop!

The Wind Beneath My Cells

The wind today!

Whew!

The trees were having violent dreams!

Or lots of excitement!

Or wild, uninhibited sex that would leave the best of us exhausted, yet smiling all over!

I sat in the doctor's office on the second floor of an old 1960s office building, waiting for the physician's assistant to tell me that I'm getting better (yes, I paid them $25, on top of the insurance company's payment, in order to obtain that valuable piece of information) and I watched a pine tree rocking and rolling outside the window. I've never seen the trunk of a pine tree move that much. It made me a little dizzy.

In a book I recently read, the author spoke about visiting that Biosphere dome thing in Arizona and seeing little spindly trees tied to the ceiling with string or something. When she asked what that was about, she was told that, since there is no wind in there, the trees don't get strong trunks. They need the resistance of wind in order to strengthen.

Well, we here in Colorado must have some pretty strong tree trunks, because they are surely given some heavy dumbbells to work with in the winds that we've been getting!

What is it about the wind that makes it so that I can't seem to separate myself from it? Sitting in a perfectly still room with only the sounds of the banging and yelling of the winds pounding at the walls and windows, my body gets all jaggledy. It's like the wind is the moon and its pull affects the waters of my cells. Wind is high tide for cells.

Wind gives my cells violent dreams, lots of excitement and wild sex.

A Slowly Deflating Face

I wonder, when full deflation occurs, will I look the same as I did before all of this happened? Or will I look like a deflated balloon?

I need to gain some weight. If I do it, can I direct it to my face in order to fill out the balloon?

Beyond all of that, no matter what I look like, can I accept myself as beautifully as those whose eyes met mine at the hospital?

While the body was fighting all foreign invaders, it seems that the mental life got pretty simple: sleep, resist and cry, go blank like a zombie, sleep, try to stay with the program, go blank like a zombie, sleep.

But I did read some this week. Not much got through the muddy brain, but the poem below, written for the author's son, went straight to my heart. It's from the book, St. Nadie in Winter, Zen Encounters with Loneliness by Terrance Keenan.

Becoming the Mountain

- for Conor

They stood on a road in December.
Wind made snow ghosts among the trees.
The child asked, "Where does the wind
come from?"

It comes from the mouth of nowhere,
between day and dark
so the trees can talk together.

"But it's winter now
and the trees are sleeping."

Yes, so listen carefully
to their dreams.

"And suppose I am the wind?"

Then you are also the dreams.