Choices

When you enter through the Walter Street Gate, on your right are a series of yew trees and they are worth some exploration. Lots of them throughout the Arb but these are easily accessible. I recommend getting as close to them as you can. The limbs are sinuous, graceful as they meander their way to sunlight. The way these branches collide and seeming tributaries become the main event - it follows some logic, I’m sure, well beyond my understanding.

Life is often like that. What are the changes that shift a secondary path to a primary one? Do we ever really know how a bit more sunshine or water or warmth in a given area might have made a sapling’s life entirely different?

This old tree is living with the choices and chances of being alive in a particular place and time. It is a blessing we humans share with perhaps more mobility and at least the illusion of more control. And the aggregation of life’s lessons show on our bodies, just as on the trees.

I take some comfort in that.