The Forest and the Trees

Beyond the trees, those saplings and teetering pines so easily visible to even the mind's eye, the forest spreads away, far and fast as ink on blotting paper, wide and deep as all the seas combined.

The trees seem simple and straightforward, like so many school children lined up for recess. Striding past them into the woods, moving deeply inward, we have access to the whole world... the oceans invite us in, then the skies, and the universe accepts us as its own. (Excuse me while I go take a tablet.)

I often puzzled at the old saw: “He can’t see the forest for the trees.” Then I grew up, wandered into the forest and saw for myself. In plain sight, there are so MANY trees in the forest, that unless we fly over in a helicopter, we simply cannot see them all. If we could stand there and see them, our vision would need stretching beyond wild imagining, like eyeballs on a cartoon character (boioioioinnnng!)...so just that line of front runners comes into view.

Odd really, like tuning in the Republican National Convention and trying to see at once, all those hundreds of white, vaguely angry and irritated faces, when the camera only shows that front row of the ones in the cowboy hats. Very disconcerting. Plus they all look alike. So, there you are. Where is a helicopter when we need one?

Yet the whole forest beckons, if we pay attention to it. Just look at all the millions of trees pulped into daily newspapers. That’s a lot of trees, so if we pay them just cursory homage, reading the journals, well, it’s as confusing as Pentecostal Halloween.

We’re commanded in different directions. One week we’re supposed to drink lots of coffee. Next week it’s boysenberry juice or Acai from the forests of Brazil. Then we’re supposed to remove welfare from the poor. Next it’s giving boatloads o' cash to the banks which are hurting so badly, they actually own most of the Third World. Then it’s cut taxes for schools and early childhood education. Next it’s bailing out big oil companies who’ve abused us with their really icky and Byzantine accidents but refuse to pay for the damages. I call that downright rude.

Yet we read on, thumbing past the "Living" section to get to the quotes and sports. See who's getting traded and how much they're going to make next year, chasing a ball around a field. I’m thinking those trees really sacrifice a lot for our daily edification. The least we could do is to try to see the whole lot of them.

There they stand, tall, fragrant, old as the universe; and here we are, blind, just barely seeing that little trail of saplings at the end of the suburbs. It seems only fair to try to see that forest-whole, since trees endure heavy decorations and strung lights at Christmas time, only to be chucked out on New Year's Day, like yesterday’s newspaper.