The Social Lives of Trees

[Steppingfeet]

...when one is a child, one seems to know these things though not in an intellectual way. I always felt safe and welcomed when I was sitting in the maple tree or apple tress in my yard.

Carla had this sort of awareness as well as a child. I've heard other stories with these sensitivities. My own senses were way too unawakened to receive these intuitions.

We have a beautiful, unique, and huge mulberry tree in our back yard. From end to end on the plane parallel with the ground, its branches span around 80ft. It has such a quality of character, a distinctness or selfhood. I've watched that tree blow in the wind, be covered in snow (its giant branches are lovely highlighted in white), grow its leaves and fill our yard with a bountiful canopy of shade, lose its leaves in the fall, be visited by squirrels and birds and deer, and otherwise crown our space with her presence. And then i consider how enormous its own root system must be, mirroring to a degree the crown above. And about May/June it spends a few weeks gifting us an infinite amount of delicious mulberries. I would love to blend consciousness with it.

After having listened to that podcast I can't help but wonder if it is a mother tree in the local network.