Is "my tree" still standing?

Some dreams leave a lasting impression on me. Some hit me like a hammer. Some dreams are funny, some sad. Few dreams wake my interest the way this one did.


In the near future...

I often project in to the future to play through things to see what it's going to be like or to take a snapshot of what I see so I can compare it with what it's really like once I get to that point in time. Without a reference or a projected image, no such comparison is possible. I often wonder if anyone else does this too. But then I remind myself that we're all related and I believe we all have the ability to do this, if we know it or not. After all, it's not magic, it's imagination. Dreamworlds are real, in our dreams, if we let them be.

Most of us dislike a long winded story, so I'll cut this one short, if I can. I'll try to capture the essentials while the reader should try to capture and project the images. If we can do this together, this short story just might make sense. Here we go. My dream.

Early September 2010, as I make my way back to that point in time, to that place in my mind, the place I know so well, I have to slow down so as not to trip over my perceptions. It's a total sensory overload as I take in the smell of the nearby murky water in the creek to the right. The creek to the left is smaller and much cleaner so it's not as smelly. As I get nearer and nearer to the point where the two merge into one, my movement is reduced to one step at a time as I look up in to the crowns of the trees nature has left standing. Erosion and change, the two key elements to this special place have made each return a special event. Not knowing how many trees are still standing, not knowing if any of them are still there, it's always a full out charge with sword in hand to that precise area, arms spread wide like a mad man trying to scare nature back into the form he remembers her to have once been. The man, the boy too always had a huge smile on his face as nature's magnet drew him into her bosom, both with arms wide open, a reunion that has happened a thousand times over, and now again.

Home is said to be there where the heart is. But now the branches bend very low as they come dangerously close to the water. STOP!

Unable to process it all with eyes wide open, I close my eyes and I sit there sort of meditating. I recall what a momentary stranger said to me a few evenings ago. As he said what he said, the world around us turned black and the image of the place I sat sitting filled the movie screen in my mind - and his - as I told him of my dream. He was a stranger for a few minutes before he morphed into a long lost friend as a huge smile invaded his face. He wore a pendant of the celtic tree of life around his neck and he gave me one of the greatest gifts as he told me the difference between man and tree.

"You can walk" he said. "Trees cannot walk. At one point in your life, whether you know it or not, you could walk about as good as a tree can walk and you were most likely sitting there under a tree. Doesn't have to be a big old tree, it could be a young one." He went on to say "each of us has his own tree, a tree he holds dear in his heart, and it's a two-way thing!" He was laughing as he said "trees aint dumb!"

That was too much for me to handle, too ...too....too deep!

The curtain fell and we were back where we were as I noticed everyone else there, they were all listening to the two of us rambling on about trees and our lives and plants and animals and how everything is connected.

There won't be a perfect match. I didn't carve my initials in any tree back home. But I did hug the ones I could get my arms around. Come September, I'm gonna go find my tree and give it a great big bear hug. After all, we're brothers.

In closure, it's my habit to first dump my words on paper and to read them later. If you find an error, jump over it and remember we're only human. I hope you enjoyed this. It's real !