Pine: I

We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires and comets inside us.
We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.
-Robert McCammon

Humans are natural disasters. We are mirror images of the forests, oceans and valley floors that surround us. We are doves, capable of extending an olive branch. We are the quivering leaves of an aspen. We are the rocks made smooth by the crashing waves that beat upon us. If we could see ourselves as we truly are, we would weep at the beauty.  We are earthquakes that rip the land asunder. We are tsunamis rolling over everything in our wake. We are pebbles thrown into a pond. We are chapters of a forest. 

I have always had a hard time with our species. It has always been easier for me to deal with us as a forest as opposed to individual trees. We seem clearer as a whole. Easier to hold in my hands. Like holding a globe, you can see all the patterns and connections. I see honesty and compassion. I see anger and resentment. I see fear. Fear is the water. It makes up 75% of who we are. I am scared to write this.

So much has happened since I spoke to you last. A forest has burnt to the ground and been reborn from its ashes. I'm in love with that idea. Death as birth. Winter as spring. Suffering as joy. I think it started on our road trips to the coast. The wind blowing in our hair. Roadside Pancakes and Green Day on a loop. We could smell the fish and feel the sand in our toes. The best part , besides the pancakes and Green Day, was driving through the ruins of the Tillamook forest. The Tillamook forest fire was a series of four wildfires that raged over a span of 18 years burning 355,000 acres of old growth timber. There was nothing left. A forest of skeletons. But then something magical happened.  It happened so slowly that I almost missed it. Little green saplings growing out of the ash. Every time we passed through I searched for new life and kept a running tally in my mind. I was that forest's biggest fan.

When you left, my life burned to the ground, but saplings grew from the ashes. I want you to know me. To know them. To read our chapters. Dad, this is my olive branch. 

Pine

"The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience -- they give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

It's so beautiful here.

Every once in awhile a day will go by where I fail to rise above my own life, my own self importance, to really see the mountains. It breaks my heart. I was twelve when I first came to Utah. I felt like I was in a fairy tale. The mountains are so close. You can reach out your hand and touch them. They cradle you in their arms, protecting you from the rest of the world.

In the fall it's nirvana. The crisp clean air. It reminds me of home. The leaves blanket the mountainside, which I'm lucky enough is my backyard. There is nothing like hiking in the cool aired, warm colored mountains after spending a summer in the scorching desert. There is football on Saturdays, even though it has been more years than I can remember, I would never betray that ritual. Everything is flavored pumpkin and the trees have never been so beautiful.

It's a whole other world here. I could write volumes on the oddity of Utah culture. And oh how I miss the people of the great Northwest! Sometimes I get so lonely that I feel like I can't breathe. But then I remember that I live in Utah and that it's the just the air quality and that I really can't breathe. I'm always homesick. Every time it rains I am given an incredible gift. It's euphoric and inspiring and filled with my dreams of returning. Sometimes, when the winds kick up, you can smell the Great Salt Lake as you walk through the art filled streets of the city that I have come to love so much. I pretend that it's the ocean and the world I am inhabiting instantly becomes the love child of rocky ocean cliffs and salt-sand beaches. I'm coming home, soon.

But I stand by my decision of red rocks over volcanic ones. I found my forest here. And by its trees, I have been taught how to live. 

Douglas Fir

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I live the greatest life.

    Do you remember waking up at five in the morning? That magical time when waves, remembering that they are the ocean, return home. It was just low tide but, to me, it looked like a homecoming. 

  As the waves embarked on their journey home they would leave us treasures, agates. And with our sweatshirts, flashlights and black garbage bags, we also would embark on a journey. I loved every agate I laid eyes on. I held them in my hands and imagined all the stories they could tell. The ocean taught me so many lessons. The first being that there are riptides and those things are fucking scary. The forests of Oregon taught me. When I am feeling hopeless and angsty about the state of the world, I just image that we are all trees in a grand forest. It's a lot easier to deal with Donald Trump when Donald is an Aspen tree. 

   I live in the best forest with the five coolest trees. I wish so much that you knew them. That you had seem them grow.