Learning About Resilience From Trees

Photo By Elizabeth Lehmann

"I had seen the trees stand up to small winds and hold their own against the elements...

The trees, clearly overmatched by the combination of winds, rain and lightning, were not fighting this storm but yielding to it. 

This is just how they were built, how the species had evolved: to survive...

That the trees were resilient no longer surprised me.  Still, I marveled at how they took blows during the season's first snowstorm...

When I woke the next day, I found the trees outside my bedroom window not moving at all ... I want to be as still as that tree, I said to myself, and stayed there until the feeling took: limbs not moving.  Trunk barely rising with each breath.  Neither yielding nor resisting.  Just being still.  Just being." ~ Bill Hayes

Read this full moving account by clicking on "The NY Times" link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/a-year-in-trees.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130407&_r=0

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