For those who know how to listen, the Earth speaks, but increasingly few know the language of the soil, the poetry of the clouds, the wisdom of the trees, the laws of water, and the profanity of life and death; the others alive with us want nothing more than to be seen and heard just as we do.
I don't speak for the trees or clouds. I can't tell you what they want or fear. But I hear the vegetation. Its volume is as loud as the anxiety emanating from the city. Trapped fox and I've engaged in dialogue with the trees. I know the ponderosa is the best. I'm indebted to them. Their bark spoke of anti-fragility before I even knew what trauma was.
I'm reminded of the soft "thunk" of a bowstring as I scan a Sam's Club parking lot. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm paranoid when I scan my surroundings in a hypervigilant manner. Then, in my father's voice, frustratingly similar to mine, I hear, "Head on a swivel!" He'd command when we went out glassing. Glassing and listening to music no louder than a whisper at the crack of dawn would make me sleepy just as I would in church, and for the same reason: I did not know what to listen to, or rather, I didn't know how to interpret what I heard.
The suburban soccer mom hears the anxiety of the city-trapped fox, but she doesn't understand. Therefore, the fox's anxiety becomes her fear of The Other. The fox suffers from her ignorance as she and her children inevitably will.
Just as the spring vegetation cries out for the Sun and demands growth, the Ponderosas weep in longing for cleansing and enriching fire. They watch as the Junipers creep westward, their useless trunks and branches siphoning out what the locals need to survive in the high desert. The Junipers hoard native resources and wait for a long overdue fire to release it all back again. But the fire they're conjuring is different from what the Ponderosas recall. The Junipers conjure a correcting, not maintaining, force. Because of the Junipers' hoarding, all must die. The fire, which once kissed the Ponderosas' bark, now consumes their crowns, leaving nothing but a trail of fertilization for a new forest, which no currently living being will ever see.