Heroes Not Zombies

One evening this week, at sunset, the sky was glowing. I went outside into the garden, as I often feel compelled to do at  sunset (as I write that I think of the scenes in “City of Angels” where the angels gather on the beach at dawn….guess I’m an evening angel!).

This is what I saw.

As I looked up across the vineyards to the top of the hill I could see the silhouettes of vines and trees – there are a lot more vines than trees around here! I zoomed in with my camera and framed this shot.

I love this.

It delights me. I find it calming, soothing, and comforting. There’s a single tree, which makes think about how we are living our separate lives now. But it doesn’t strike me as lonely. Maybe that’s because I know no tree exists in isolation. Even when there are no other trees nearby, it is intimately and massively connected to the environment in which it lives, with roots stretching out widely and deeply, constantly exchanging nutrients with millions of other organisms.

I see a tree like this and think how connected it is to the four elements –

Earth – with deep, wide root systems

Air – to collect carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen

Water – captured from the air, the rain, and the soil

Fire – directly turning the Sun’s energy into power to break down the carbon dioxide, build its physical structure of trunk, branches, leaves and roots, make sugars, and pull nutrients up from the depths.

This tree, this vineyard, this sky, this world GLOWS.

We are all intimately connected.

That delights me.