As he now remembers Snowland and the mystical woman he met up there at 8000ft altitude, he remembers how the trees have impacted him, as he tries to associate her with something they both can relate to without feeling bound. Both of them value independence and privacy above all else, even their strange unique relationship. The have found a few common interests, or rather, safe and indifferent topics to talk about casually. And trees is a safe topic, aside from coffee, deer, and snow.
When he first arrives the trees are green. Within a month the snow comes suddenly. He is shocked. All his past assignments were in the tropics. Snow is a novelty. In his homeland in outer-space, there is no snow or season. They live beyond earth time. While on earth he has always been the guardian of the South Wind which control station is located in an evergreen island in the tropics. This new assignment up the 8000 ft of a mountain in the West (or near West) is entirely different from what he has accustomed himself.
When the snow comes it is sudden and all encompassing. When he returns from an outside assignment he is caught in camera by her standing on the top of the stairs of the sundeck. The deck is steeped in at least 12 inches of snow. The trees are his background. He still has that photo. Green trees with snow all over their branches and trunks. He looks stunned. What a sight!
But it is not so much the sight of the green trees covered with brilliantly white snow that puzzles him. It is the meaning of those trees. Sometimes he compares himself with a tree to the earthling. A living and thriving being with its branches all pointing towards the sky, the location of the light source and life sustenance. Like the earth writer Orhan Pamuk once wrote, “I don’t want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.” He wants to be a meaning of things. Being a meaning is different from being a physical existence.
He wants to be a meaning for existence. How to communicate this to her, an earthling? They are there together and yet not together, each existing each own meaning. He has had many acquaintances in his many decades of living on earth. But none is like this acquaintance on the high mountain. She is not a local. She comes from the oceanic continent. Is she on a secret assignment like his, guarding the earth? She never talks about it and he is not expected to ask. She does not ask him his too.
So he puts his mind on the trees. They are his great and faithful companions. They tell him a lot of things through the sound of the wind as he takes long walks on the paths meandering through the snowy woodland. But they never talk about their meaning on earth, not the kind he hopes they will reveal. He knows the textbook stuff of course. He imagines there is more —the unwritten ones, the often chuckling and sometimes sighing thoughts deeply embedded in the ancient tree trunks. He has never found out.
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Here is a hauntingly beautiful song for memory sake
I will remember you, will you remember me? I’m so tired but I can’t sleep Standin’ on the edge of something much to deep It’s funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word We are screaming inside, but we can’t be heard I’m so afraid to love you But more afraid to lose Clinging to a past that doesn’t let me choose Once there was a darkness Deep and endless night You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me life
sound mind journal 