It is Spring. The young tree stretched upward, lifting its slender arms and feeling the first surge of sap run through its xylem and phloem. This was its very first Spring ever and the whole world was new and fresh. The little tree watched as the days of Spring passed. The snow began to melt and rivulets of water grew and prospered into great torrents that tumbled and somersaulted down the slopes until the streams met the rivers and the rivers met the seas. The little tree couldn’t *see* all of this, of course, but it could *feel* it happening through its trembling rootlets and tiny leaflets. It watched in wonder as the baby animals took their own tumbles down the slope and found their feet beneath them. The little tree itself grew and laid down layers of cells, stretching into pliant layers of bark and pith. The sky was blue, blue, blue.
It is Summer. The little tree is still little, but growing fast. The days are so warm now that it can hardly keep up with the speedy sap and the cells that grow thicker and stronger every day. A squirrel has nicked the brand-new bark on its eastern side so that it’s not quite a perfect infant anymore. The sap leaked out and sealed the wound over and soon it will be nothing but a rodentian memory. The tumbling towers of water have slowed down now, to where some are just trickles and others are completely dry. They will come back. The little tree watched as the baby animals grew lanky and awkward and lost their spots and stripes. The sky was burnished brass.
It is Autumn. The little tree watches with surprise as its chartreuse-turned green leaves begin to flame out with colors it knew not that it had. The changing of the seasons reveals new things about all of us. The roar of the rivers had turned into a quiet murmur as the stream sang itself to sleep. The baby animals, from mice to bunnies to bambies, now nearly the size of their parents, slowly turned from their bright summer robes into the universal monochrome gray of the encroaching winter. Only the little tree and its like blazed brighter than ever. The sky was ocher.
It is Winter. The little tree was sad to lose its bright, bright leaves. It had worked so hard to pull their substance from its rootlets into the skyward leaves. It was too young to know that they would return again, having been nourished in the soil and rain and drawn up through the sap yet again. The woods are quiet now, the streams asleep under a thick blanket of snow. The baby animals are, too. Only a few venture out to visit with the tree, whose Summer wound has become nothing more than a characteristic gnarl on its maturing bark. The little tree’s limbs stand naked, but it is not cold. It can still feel the warmth and life of the earth pulsing through it, building, growing, preparing for Spring. The sky is cerulean.
©2020 by Jessie Hanson. All rights reserved.