Some thoughts on trees…

THE MIRACLE OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS: I’ve been around trees for years - and I’m still occasionally taken aback with the idea of leaves harnessing light. Light that is cast out by the old sun some 150 million kilometres away. This cosmic, vagabond light – scattering throughout the dark vastness of space at phenomenal speed. Only a minuscule amount of the total sunlight emitted is absorbed within delicate but determined blades of green on our wondrous planet, earth. Here, on our planet, countless rustling leaves conspire to conjure from light, carbon dioxide and water - a commonplace miracle…trees! Surely there can be no greater homage to light in this grand old universe than trees? (Photo: Sean Fagan - hornbeam leaves emerging in spring).

CREATING A MASTERPIECE FROM MISTAKES: I’m often fond of the imperfections I come across in nature...how life, flawed but determined, gets on with the business of living - of throwing its lot into that unpredictable mix. Makes me realise more fully that evolution is an on-going, superbly-detailed, interconnected and flawed process. Failure and success interwoven into the very fabric of life (Photo: Sean Fagan - Lime leaf).

WHY DID BUDDHA ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT UNDER A TREE? Do trees offer council to humans and other forms of life? Are they capable of filling us with quiet contentment? I don’t know… but I do know I like to be around them, near them. I especially like to be among them during a quiet night, sitting by a campfire - the moon captured among the fingertips of their long, light-hungry limbs. When one is around trees for long bouts of time a bond can be created -  and it feels natural and normal in a way to consider trees as friends (Photo: Sean Fagan - tree shadow of a lone sugar maple).