2.8

Once I saw a proud, gnarled tree, wrapped around an outcropping rock, all support having long since fallen away, leaving the roots warped and twisted into fissures in the last bastion of stone. The snow was falling in thick sheets and soon the valley below would be obscured from sight, the sky already a lowering layer in a thunderous press. The tree was unperturbed, unmoved, unchanging. The flakes accrued and the branches were unaffected. But as I watched, a wind, terrible and cold, rushed up from the valley and tore at the lip of the canyon. The atmosphere itself fell and twisted as the air flashed up with increasing speed. The snow, once lazily falling downward, was ripped from the tree and thrown again into the air. The branches, once still, sung with the violence of the storm. When a tree feels this strongly for a blast, does it think the storm foolish for trying to blow it down? On the contrary, it grips its roots and howls back at the wind, trying to join the noise, to be part, to be witness. Be my wind, and I will be your tree.