I wrote this last year:
“Well, I made it to 65. I am grateful for the experiences along the way, especially the ones that ended up as stories, or may yet. So grateful also to the family and friends here and gone who made it such a rich unforgettable (I hope) journey.
When I started typing this, 65 came out as ^%; as I had the caps lock on. That may be a sign of the coming times, and yet appropriate; I plan to live life like the cap lock is on from now on. SO MAY WE ALL.”
Most of us had no idea what 2020 had in store for the world, the human world anyway. My life, or the living of it, didn’t work out as I planned, the CAP LOCK lock did not go on as I had enisioned it. But then that is true of most of my life, and maybe most of life.
There is a tree across the way from me. It has a double trunk, split in two almost at the ground. One tree or two, I don’t know. An oak or something else solid and strong.
The right trunk is maybe forty feet tall, and leaves are just starting to bud. The other goes up thirty feet or so, where the trunk is twisted, and tapers almost to a point. A tornado maybe came close and wrenched off the top. But I had not noticed until today that out of that ragged ending, slender branches reached a good ways, buds perched on the ends, just as with its twin.
It reminded me of a time I was driving through Yellowstone, a year to two after fires had ravaged a third of the park. Beneath the blackened remnants of the pines, saplings beyond count had thrust up through the charcoal earth. Most were only inches high. But the forest was healing itself. I wrote this:
Seek the path
Of vital devastation.
In the white pines,
Spring forward.
So may we all, cap locks or no.
