We saw this fabulous weather-beaten tree at Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area in Nevada.
I changed my Twitter cover image to this when the yellow brittlebush flowers I had previously chosen seemed too sunny. It looked wild and windswept, and it somehow fit my mood better.
Another day, I didn’t start out thinking about the tree. I was thinking about how I tend to feel my life needs to conform to a certain pattern, like I’m not valid if I’m not checking off a set of boxes, when – in reality – we are all writing our own stories as we go.
Life is not lined up and orderly. It is organic, unpredictable, wild.
The thoughts found their way into a short poem, and one of the images in my mind as I wrote it was that tree in Nevada.
Not a fence post
but a tree,
rough and irregular,
both warped by
the elements and
strengthened by them.
Each meandering ring,
a storyteller.
