5K High Altitude Apothecary

🌲 The Day I Became a Tree

Sometimes wonder lands on you.

There was a house I lived in with a backyard full of pinyon pines.

I had chickens then, and one of my favorite things to do was go outside with a book and spend some time in the hammock.

I would read, watch the chickens wander around the yard, and keep an eye on all the birds that came to visit.

I fed them, so there were always many different kinds coming and going.

But I especially liked the little nuthatches.

They looked like tiny Oreos to me—little black-and-white birds, almost like flying yin-yang symbols.

And they did something I found fascinating.

They walked on the trees.

Up they would go.

Then down again.

Around the trunk.

Sometimes even headfirst.

I had seen woodpeckers work their way along trees, of course, but there was

something different about watching these tiny little birds scamper around the bark as

though gravity didn’t apply to them in quite the same way.

I could sit in the hammock and watch them for ages.

Then one afternoon, I wasn’t lying in the hammock.

I was just sitting in it.

And one of the nuthatches flew over.

Instead of landing on one of the pinyon pines, it landed on my leg.

I froze.

There was this tiny wild bird clinging to me exactly as though my leg were another tree trunk.

And then it looked up at me.

I had never had a wild bird land on me before.

For a few seconds, there was no distance between the someone sitting in the

hammock watching the birds and the little creature being watched.

Apparently, as far as the nuthatch was concerned, I had simply become part of the

landscape.

Maybe even a tree.

And I was completely amazed.

It didn’t last long.

It didn’t need to.

There are experiences in life that are extraordinary precisely because they happen for only a moment.

A little bird lands on your leg.

Looks up at you.

And flies away.

Years later, you still remember.

What Became Visible

Perhaps wonder doesn’t always require us to go looking for something extraordinary.

Sometimes it happens because we have been still long enough that the world stops treating us like an interruption.

I had spent all those afternoons watching the nuthatches move up and down the pinyon trees.

That afternoon,

for just a moment,

one of them included me.

And I have never forgotten it.

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