The other day while visiting Spokane on business, a man took a leisurely stroll through the Finch Arboretum during a break.  As he walked he couldn’t help but notice how the absence of leaves made his eyes particularly keen to the dance of hues and textures in all those coloring-up branches and limbs, and buds . . . all those glorious, awakening trees just beginning to swell and stretch, and grow.

It seemed to him that he could actually feel their rising energy and sense their emerging awareness that change was afoot.

Then out of the corner of his eye, the faintest movement . . .

A sudden, slight chill.

He turned toward it and walked slowly up the hill in its direction.

With a gust of breeze came a soft, organic clatter, ten thousand budding branches adjusting to one another and stretching. 

And just as suddenly again, silence.

Heady, fragrant, woodland . . . silence.

Spring-is-almost here silence.

He took a deep breath and turned slowly within the still, cold air, completing a circle, hungry to take in every delicious sight and sound and smell, while ever so slowly beginning to understand that he was not at all alone.  There were many, many sets of eyes upon him, assessing his every move.

“I do not wish to disturb you.” he whispered.  “I’d simply like to walk among you for a bit, to watch and breathe . . . and learn.”

He waited then within that silence, willing to hear any small voice that might choose to respond.

A ground squirrel bolted from one fresh mound of dirt to another.

A crow in the distance caaawwed an “I see you” greeting to a passing friend.

When the sun ducked behind a heavy cloud, a talkative breeze appeared almost as suddenly, and ambled playfully down the slope, while shrubs and branches shifted nervously in place on earthbound feet.

More silence again, . . . and that little tingle running upward along his spine.

Haltingly, he spoke again.

‘You’re all so beautiful!” he said softly, “. . . and seeing you in this awakening state makes me grateful.”

He started moving down the hill, careful steps on slippery grass toward a warm car and his next meeting.

Again, the slightest movement in an unexpected place caught his eye and held it.

He changed course and stepped deliberately toward it, step after step, after step, shortening the distance between his black-polished boots and the leaf-strewn edge of a wooded copse. 

A smile began to creep across his face as he pictured this curious scene from a separate vantage, from high above, as the passing crow might have seen it:

A tree and a man stand at the edge of a springtime wood, looking intently into one another, attempting to understand the puzzle that the other represents.  A long silence and then a hand reaching across those few remaining feet.  A tentative touch, a caress, finally an affectionate, full-palmed stroke.  The man bows slightly, whispering ‘thank you’.

When he turned to leave, in that thinnest of eye-blink moments, he could have sworn he saw the tree nod too, just slightly . . . but of course he didn’t quite trust himself.  He was afraid to believe what he thought his eyes had seen.

“Don’t be so sentimental.” he muttered, turning and pushing his hands deep into his pockets to warm them.

The crow clucked in amusement and continued flapping toward a distant Fir.

He continued to shake his head and mutter ‘pragmatic’ denials, completely missing then, the larger gift.


Some say an awakening tree may nod ever so slightly, or smile . . . just before it winks.

John A Finch Arboretum:  Texture.