The Echo of Tree Rings

Numerous personality profiles define me as leadership material. That always baffles me. I do not see myself in the way that people tend to see leaders, not human leaders anyway. Human leaders are like tall trees. They are obvious, strong, stately, and over-shadowing, intimidating, etc. I am just prickly.

Then I realized, in nature the tall trees are the leaders toward doom, not the leaders of healing, though they do offer much healing. A forest full of tall trees beckons loggers and wildfires. A tall tree is old and many of them die on their own without the hand of man. An old tree is impressive, because they don't all get that old. On the other hand, if you plow a field and then let it sit fallow you will get common weeds, lots and lots of common weeds, brambles mostly, raspberries, blackberries, hawthorns, blackthorns, nettles, burdocks, etc. They won't all be prickly, you will also get things like poison ivy! If walking through that field in two years, or so, don't wear short pants! You might not even be able to walk through that field without some sort of cutting implement. Those are the real leaders, the mothers of the forest. They will sort out the properties of the soil and encourage the growth of the appropriate weeds for the balance that is required for the little saplings. They will protect the little saplings from a variety of threats. They will offer gifts to anyone thinking of plowing that field again, gifts of berries and medicinal herbs. Granted, there are few these days that understand the value of those gifts, but that does not make them any less valuable. The value of a field that sits fallow for a few years is so great that Nature herself will burn down an ancient forest so that the underbrush can be reborn.  If all those little prickly leaders get their way they will one day be overshadowed by the giants of the forests.

I am in awe of tall trees, especially the ones that are in ancient forests. I am not a tall tree. I am a prickly little mother leader.... the kind that every tall tree has way, way back in its family story. Maybe some day I will be overshadowed, perhaps by a tall tree with little squirrels in its branches, the forest planters, they promote the leaders of the next generation, as do the birds, and the bees, and the flowers, and all the trees... such interconnectedness.