A Forest God

This has turned into a weekend of car repair and grading student writing. But last Friday M. and I did manage to fit in a short cross-country ramble in the Wets. In some shadowed ravine I bumped into that forest god again.

Or, to use technical language, it is a sort of “irruption of the numenous.”

You’re walking through the woods, and there, in a tiny clearing, you see a man-high young fir tree, all perky and perfect, every needle sharp, blue-green in the sun.

On its needles has fallen a shower of golden coins–the golden, rounded leaves of aspen trees. The little fir seems to have its “hands” out snatching leaves from the shower of gold.

It is full of shining power–and it’s just a fir tree.