I have always envied the birds, particularly the raptors. We earthbound creatures have such a circumscribed worldview, a perspective bounded — and bound — by that which remains stubbornly out of reach. We can stretch our arms outward, upward, through the air and toward the sky, but absent the help of modern technology, we are forever destined to look up, with no ability to see our world from the panoptic view of “above.”
Perhaps it’s also why I’ve always felt such an affinity for the trees.
They, too, are rooted in place — many of them, as deeply an indigenous part of this place as our own ancestors. Some of them have already lived far longer than anyone alive today, and they will outlive us by many generations yet. They may not see the earth from the view of the hawk’s eye . . . but they provide shelter for the hawk, and they have witnessed worlds we can barely imagine.
They reach worlds we can only imagine, too, in any sort of real terms, anyway. We talk a lot about touching the sky, and of course, modern technology has given us the ability to ascend, in a sense: We build towers of glass and steel and materials less easily pronounced, then look upon the land spread out below us, a toylike world in miniature.We do not fly, but we are carried through the air by metal machinery that does. A select few go farther still, beyond the blue into the deep black of space, although, again, they do not do it themselves, but encapsulated in the technological cocoons that permit flight absent wings grown organically.
It is an oddity of human perception that, standing beneath the willows now, newly leafed and green, they seem to reach farther than they did only two weeks ago, when their branches were gold and bare. One would expect that the skeletal arms would seem to touch the sky in ways that now, bending beneath the weight of new growth, they would not — and yet, the effect is exactly opposite. It is now, when the branches rebirth themselves, that they seem to stretch highest, reach farthest, touch a sky that remains stubbornly elusive and evasive to our weaker entreaties.
Today, the sky is pale, more gray than blue, holding the hope of rain and the promise of snow. Beneath the willows, it is possible to believe that they touch the sky itself, that they have the power to collect the water from the clouds and bring it down to an earth still parched from winter’s drought.
And today, at least, it is possible to believe that if we follow their lead, if we stand strong and confident and open-hearted, if we reach outward, upward . . . we, too, can touch the sky.
~ Aji
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