It’s as if you can hear the earliest stirings of cyclical life in this ancient, arthritic oak.  It’s like there’s some sort of heaving, or groaning going on, as it starts its slow annual tug on the resources it needs for rebirth.

This happens each and every year, and despite it’s advanced age and massive structure – indeed precisely because of its great size – it will need more water and minerals for sustenance and growth than ever before.  To get access to these resources, this old, gnarled, woody skeleton requires intimate, seamless contact with the soil.   Its permanence and solidity belie just how soft, fragile and vulnerable the root-tips need to be to be able to draw on its life-source.

It looks as strong and independent as it ever will.  In fact it’s more dependent than it has ever been.

Not today.  10:43am  July 17, 2007