Reading “Trees” makes one truth impossible to dodge: only nature can do what nature does and it does it without asking for notice.
A single tree turns light into life, slows rain, steadies soil, offers shelter, and somehow becomes a place to pray. The ocean works on the mind the same way, remove the lounge chairs and you’re left with a moving sanctuary that teaches scale, surrender, and rhythm.
Our inventions chase feelings; forests and seas create them. One is a switch you flip. The other is a practice you enter. If we keep cutting the practice down, what will be left to tune us? We book “escapes” to the very places we undermine, then wonder why the relief fades the moment the trip ends. Maybe the solution isn’t more novelty, but more reverence.
If nature is a temple, then the liturgy is restraint. Touch less. Take less. Stay longer. Listen. Let the tree pray for you when you can’t find words. Let the ocean hold what you can’t hold alone.
And if only God can make a tree, then perhaps the holiest thing we can make is space for every grove, shoreline, and creature doing sacred work without a witness.
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