Loving

These three are Tane, the older one, Ash and Chestnut - who are hard to tell apart. Tane will chase Ash off sometimes. Ash chases Chestnut. One or two seem to sing a little, but not much. They might be wary of making their presence known.

I do take pictures and film, but I also just watch and speak to them.

Love... I was trying to describe to someone what I feel from trees when I sit with them and it's a kind of depersonalised love... As though, and a tree said this, it costs them nothing to love. We seem to put a price tag on love: the loved other should appreciate, reciprocate, behave in a certain way. The thing with the tree though, the other thing, is that you have to be there, be present. There is something about the here and the now. Although I have this sense that a tree's reach is global and aeon-expansive, there is also a focus on place and on presence. The beetles fed by a tree are "here". The bird's nest is "here". Another example of how there is a both/and not an either/or. Trees are as much here and now as they are always and everywhere. The difference is that the here and now impact is... more emotionally salient?

Ah, what am I saying?

I have been trying to quieten my mind, rest, recover, but I am struggling to do so. A shaken jar of water and silt that refuses to settle. In the shortening days, worries about the future are like storm-tossed leaves spiraling around me.

Which reminds me: I have started reading J A Baker's The Peregrine. Oh! He writes like an angel. The most beautiful prose I have ever read. It is stark evidence that my attempts are lumpen and clumsy.