The Pine Trees
As I sit here, in the "Cabin in the Pines", as named by Ga Ga, I walk outside on this bone chilling night to look at the river and see its motion as the day winds down and as the faint sun makes its way behind the clouds of this January night. After observing the river's unique look in the mist of ice and sleet, I look up to the skies only to calmly and intently focus on the tall pine tress, the long needle pines that have been here since the beginning of time, or at least close to that mark, close enough in my time line.
I refocus my glace to a locked down thought, and send my admiration and respect for these trees, so native to south Alabama. While the rest of the world and possible portions of nature have bended or have broken, the pines have not only evolved but have remained, standing tall, stretching towards the sun and never bending and breaking to the struggles of nature's it's challenges.
I could fear their existence for they could bend and fall and send my life into an orbit of discombobulation and inconvenience and money spent. But, as I look up to the top branch and then follow the long and thick trunk to the roots, I have acquired trust, knowing that they will continue to be the roots of this place, and not give in.
They have not been bent or broken to hurricane after hurricane winds that most could not with stand or the heat of summer, or the rains that wash away the soil beneath, or now, the wicked and heavy sting of ice, freezing rain. I stop and look up to the top of the pines and thank them for being an example of shelter and safety, and I thank them for being a constant, even in the passing of years and natures' threating ways.
I now draw strength from the pines, as I observe their strength and I trust they will continue to stand tall and strong while sheltering me with their presence and their unwavering ways.
I have watched them thru the years, I have walked outside to feel their presence and watch their branches move with the summer's warm wind or the October's slight change in the wind's direction. They have sung to me in the Fall wind and have whispered to me in a softer wind of Summer and they have signaled a change of season and a change of life's phases and time passing in one's journey.
And so we take from them, the essence of roots and the willingness to with stand all that nature or maybe life throws on our needles, weighing us down yet we, like the pines, find a way to withstand and stand ever tall and reaching for the sun.
The pines, at the Cabin in the Pines, are still here.