I'd been to see my father and on the way home had some time to kill before a weight session with Leanne. I detoured through the countryside until a tree called me. The tree that called me was not this lime but, perhaps unsurprisingly, an oak.
The oak was a huge old tree in his prime standing with four other oaks in parkland. I sat under the canopy absorbing the place.
After my latest session with the tree-conversation group, my homework was dreamwork, which worries me as I so seldom remember my dreams. I asked the oak if trees dream during winter dormancy and he said yes. I asked what that was like and he said it was like the feelings I might get of awe or of love or of connection. No story, as such, just feelings. And how do you feel the feelings? I wondered. This relates to my sense that sentience as we know it is not what trees experience.
The oak concurred. He said: you are the only one who understands that feeling can be other than what you take feeling to be. I must admit to feeling very flattered. I tried some modesty ("Surely not just me...") but the tree insisted I pursue the thought. I said, "I can't imagine what it is like for you but I can imagine that there are experiences which I cannot imagine."
It was then that I went over to the lime and discovered a hollow place!!!
I'm enjoying what you and the oak say about the dream-feelings of winter-dormant trees. And your filming of the lime is beautiful -- the way you approach, coming up so close to the bark. Lovely. Ant the window,