I couldn’t help but be awed by the trees sometimes.  Standing in the same spots for so long that they grew into trees big enough to climb, or even trees too big to climb.  Meanwhile other trees around them were felled for houses or for the empty space- sometimes even for both. 

How did certain places get cut and others not?  That part always boggled my mind. And how long it takes them to grow, that boggled my mind too. They grow and grow and grow and live and live and live.  I guess that’s what attracted me to them.

Cities grow, true, and you can always feel the life in them, but it’s a hectic kind of life.  The moving, shifting, speeding, honking, jostling, crowded kind of life.  You can always hear the hum of electricity, because everything is powered.

Trees are quiet.  You can feel them growing, but not in the lopsided, edge against edge way of cities.  They grow deliberately, as if they think through every new design and pattern before beginning.  Even the ugliest of trees has a rhythm, a pattern, which makes it beautiful. 

The best part, though, is the peace.  Sometimes if I see a big enough tree even in the middle of a crowded city, I can feel the peace.  They carry the memories and weight of so much time, they don’t have to rush and bustle.  They can just stand and watch the world.

Which explains why I’m drawn to this little forest.  It’s not really a forest, just a patch of land that happened not to be cut down, and now won’t be anytime soon thanks to the environmentalists in the area.  Whenever I need to think I take a walk around in this place, it’s like the world disappears and time stops, I hate to ruin the timeless ageless quality of the place by walking through it. 

The trees have been around for longer than the city, even longer than the oldest cities in the area.  Some trees are wider than 4 feet across, though they’re never measured perfectly, trees aren’t perfect shapes.  Their root systems stick up and their dead leaves carpet the ground more thickly than the snow ever does.  And yet they still exist.

With everything I felt about trees I still wasn’t willing to believe one thing about them.  There were all sorts of legends about people disappearing in that patch of woods.   It was isolated in the hopes that it would stop pulling people in if they knew where it was, but I’d been there many times, and I never disappeared. I couldn’t believe they’d harm anything.

So I found myself one evening upset and needing to go wander in the woods, as I often did when I was trying to work problems out.  I was going to leave before dark, because I know better than to wander through city streets at night for very long. 

I knew every root, every branch, every scar on every tree in my part of the forest.  I didn’t get lost- I ended up someplace I didn’t know.  I stumbled around for a while, hoping to find my way back as darkness fell earlier under the branched canopy.  Then I saw a movement from the corner of my eye.

No, I more felt the movement, the same way I felt the presence of the trees around me.  It was as if the trees themselves had moved, and yet I knew trees couldn’t move.  I’d had enough science classes to learn that.  I felt movement all around me, and watched, mesmerized, as the movements gained solidity.

They were nearly human shaped, but not exactly.  Their hair was like a bush around their heads, like the pictures of people who stuck their fingers in light sockets.  They barely seemed to have legs, and I couldn’t discern arms on them either, and they intricately wove amongst each other.

I would have said they were unaware of my presence, but they looked at me.  They saw me the same way I saw them.  And they went on with their dance.  Then one broke away, this being, made of something intangible and barely visible to human eyes.

She looked at me, and I knew she was a she, her eyes had the age, the strength, the power, the patience of the trees around her and I understood.  In the instant our eyes locked she showed me everything.  All the disappeared travelers had been chosen, as I now was, to join them.  To live and be the trees themselves, always watching, waiting, patient and timeless. 

To provide a shelter to people and watch over everything.  To put down roots and to be a part of something for once, a part of something wonderful and huge.  And a part of a group, a family of sorts.  They were the life that I felt when I walked through the forest, calming my restless spirit.

She reached out her hand to me, and I shook my head.  I couldn’t leave what I had.  For the first time I felt something else emanating from the trees, disappointment, but she nodded.  Then showed me that there was a new sapling, and I knew it was for me, if I ever changed my mind.  I would always be welcome to share my spirit with a tree, and live my life with them instead of the jostle and rush of city life.