The Wisest of Friends

I have found that to find the best friends you also have to wander around in the best places. In my humble, but maturing, opinion, you won’t find any places better than nature. One of the best things about this place called nature is that it can be found just about anywhere. You may have to look a bit harder at times, but it’s there. Many friends of the ‘best’ variety can be found there. Just like you and me, these friends are all unique in their personality. Some are fleeting but beautiful. Others hang around for a season or two. The oldest have been around longer than ‘time’ as we understand it. But the best friends, I’ve found, exist somewhere in the middle. 

As I look around, I hear, and then see a stream. A stream friend is cleansing and offers unlimited energy to recharge your depleted soul. But they can be hard to follow and offer so much so fast that it can take a while to understand what they are saying. 

Rock friends are amazing. Who doesn’t appreciate a good rock friend? But they are so ancient and wise that our intellectual quandaries seem insignificant compared to what they’ve seen and experienced. This can make them seem a little indifferent to us impatient and self-important beings.

But tree friends … Tree friends are special because their only ambition in their long-to-us lives is to serve … to listen. They have been standing there for days, seasons … lifetimes. Continually reaching deep into the earth and at the same time touching the stars, talking, listening and gathering wisdom from a network that stretches far beyond our imagination.

Tree friends stand season after season, enduring whatever weather is thrown at them. Standing true and silent, ready to listen and help us understand the weather we hold inside … sunny, or stormy. Not only do they stand ready for you and me but generations before us have been drawing energy and wisdom from that same friend. Many have leaned against its trunk to rest, to hide, to think, to live, to die.

You can ask it about itself, and it will tell you some, but most of the self-kept mystery of its life is left to us to imagine. The intricate and protective relationships it maintains fall well beyond our understanding.

So, for now, I am satisfied to visit and listen to it laugh in the summer and fall into a resting silence in the winter. I can examine its scars and explore all the enriched life around it. I can share stories and then listen and ponder as it stirs the imaginings of my soul.

When it comes time, it will stay and I will leave. I will later discover the part of itself it left in me to draw upon in its absence. A tree friend will help you find answers if you ask or you can just talk for a while. The answers and dialog will seem to come from within but that’s how it works with the very wisest of friends.

Opinionated model

The Cast. All of which are often accused of hearing voices … They’re just jealous.

An earlier meeting. When the discussion was first started.