Perhaps it's because the last MFA application I'm waiting on (due any day now) is from a school in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle. Maybe it's because the book I'm currently reading, "Snow Falling on Cedars", is set on an composite island in Puget Sound. Maybe it's because I've been there. Been to Seattle. Visited Mt. Rainer. But I've been enamored all morning with Washington State.
Sitting over breakfast with Isaac I was suddenly warmed by the memory of a picture taken on our honeymoon at the national park at the base of Mt. Rainer. Jen is standing in a red t-shirt and light brown cords. Her then long black hair pulled tight. Sunglasses atop her head. Head tilted, eyes squinting in the sunlight. Small in the foreground set against the backdrop of the mountain. It's a picture of her I love. Loved taking it. Love looking at it. And holding it, I can feel the mountain trembling in my hand at her beauty.
The trees in Washington, especially around Mt. Rainer, are massive and prolific. They stretch high and tall into cloudless blue skies (incidentally, Seattle gets less rainy days per year than New York City). The landscape envisions most accurately what G.K. Chesterton surmised of man's attempt to place himself in relation to the universe, "Man has always been small when compared to the nearest tree". And I have never seen trees that tall anywhere else. Sequoias I think is what they were. Stolid giants stood still over time. Possibly speaking slowly, like Fangorn. Telling us, in the slight swaying of the branches, their names over the millenia. For a moment that that trip through the forest on our honeymoon, I had a moment to listen to them. To stand, small and contrite and in awe of the structures of nature.
What I hear today is that memory of a time some eight years ago. And that I am still small. Small compared to the Sequoia. Small compared to the pine tree teetering next door. Small next to the saplings. But I have a love that is giantesque. A love, I suspect, that has only just got around to speaking to me her name.
Sitting over breakfast with Isaac I was suddenly warmed by the memory of a picture taken on our honeymoon at the national park at the base of Mt. Rainer. Jen is standing in a red t-shirt and light brown cords. Her then long black hair pulled tight. Sunglasses atop her head. Head tilted, eyes squinting in the sunlight. Small in the foreground set against the backdrop of the mountain. It's a picture of her I love. Loved taking it. Love looking at it. And holding it, I can feel the mountain trembling in my hand at her beauty.
The trees in Washington, especially around Mt. Rainer, are massive and prolific. They stretch high and tall into cloudless blue skies (incidentally, Seattle gets less rainy days per year than New York City). The landscape envisions most accurately what G.K. Chesterton surmised of man's attempt to place himself in relation to the universe, "Man has always been small when compared to the nearest tree". And I have never seen trees that tall anywhere else. Sequoias I think is what they were. Stolid giants stood still over time. Possibly speaking slowly, like Fangorn. Telling us, in the slight swaying of the branches, their names over the millenia. For a moment that that trip through the forest on our honeymoon, I had a moment to listen to them. To stand, small and contrite and in awe of the structures of nature.
What I hear today is that memory of a time some eight years ago. And that I am still small. Small compared to the Sequoia. Small compared to the pine tree teetering next door. Small next to the saplings. But I have a love that is giantesque. A love, I suspect, that has only just got around to speaking to me her name.
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