Every day I stretch and look at the trees out here. I tried to count the ones I could see, just so I would have an idea. I gave up around thirty because I wasn’t even close to finished. It was a dull undertaking.

Stretching at the trees however is not at all boring. They like to play along, leaning and cheering like when you cupped your hands over your mouth as a child and gently breathed out “ahhh”, intending to sound like a large audience going nuts. Sussurus. These little leaves just lose it for my stretching.

I look up at the bright hangers-on and I wonder what they wait for. What little photosynthesis-fed filament is holding them up? I suppose dying on the ground under a cold winter blanket would be kind of lame, but I bet the fall down is stellar. Imagine getting stuck on another branch for a while? Or if you were an acorn, tumbling into everything on the descent. Taking the long way has always been the best.

I got it in my head that the trees would like to see me pose like them. I was in the middle of mountain pose and thought about the fact of being atop a mountain. It tickled me to think that if the world feels anything, if energy passes through us and the natural world the way so many of everyone’s ancestors have always believed, these trees might get a kick out of me pretending to be like them. I remember doing the same as a child. I laughed out loud and showed them I could still be a tree–just marvel at my straight spine!

I don’t really give a shit anymore if feeling like I’m connected to trees alienates me from other humans. I’m over it. Imagine what these trees could tell us, if we only knew how to listen! We only just figured out that they communicate with one another, slow ape brains. They have watched evolution, and when we die they will (fuck, hopefully) still be witnessing the world as it changes.

And somewhere in the rings of their memories, these far more than thirty odd trees will have recorded a shared moment when one lone, tiny, inconsequential human stood as tall as she could and giggled ferociously at them.