See that stop sign at the base of the hill? That’s where the side road merges onto the truck route that runs past my house. I love the view from here, and today’s winter hues especially please me.
Just behind that stop sign you see a group of dark pines. The road swerves behind them and climbs a hill. Above that dark stand of pines, up past some bare treetops, you see the tops of three more pines. They aren’t really pines; they’re spruces. And these are three of the six that border my house. I call them my sentinels. We have a decades-long history.
Here’s two of them, dancing for you:
From their very top branches, you can look east and see the two roads merging. Up the hill behind my house is the remnant of another road that used to join the main one. They formed a stretch of a trail that, a hundred years ago, ran between New York and Chicago. These trees and my house have been here all that time. Double that time if you want to know the whole story.
They tell me my house used to be a stagecoach stop. I know one of the men who lived here before me was a blacksmith. A friend showed me where he’s buried, pointed out the remains of his brick oven down the hill on the other side of the road. Said the old guy was a student of the Bible, could quote it to you all day long.
He probably had an interesting perspective of things. He saw life through a far different set of lenses than any of us wears today.
Like him, the trees have their own unique way of understanding how they fit into the where-and-when of their lives. The passersby on the road below them each have their own. Just like you and me.
I like the way that looking at things from different points of view broadens you, lets you see things in more depth. It kind of makes you feel richer somehow, doesn’t it?