The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes

Author:Ned Hayes [Hayes, Ned]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

When we left my grandparents’ house, the light had changed. The fog and mist were not covering the whole sky anymore. There were shafts of light coming down from the clouds above. In the Pacific Northwest, we call this time when the sun comes out “sun breaks.” And on the radio, they will even tell you when the sun might break through the clouds.

After the mist in the morning, when the clouds were gone and things were no longer half obscured by fog, the light reflecting off everything seemed to give it a bright glow. I felt as if we were submerged in a great ocean of light.

The Pacific Northwest feels like a very different place when this happens. As my mother drove, the light transformed everything I can see. In the bright light, the green land looked like a picture of a tropical island, even though it was not as hot—or as beachy—as an island like that.

It was also hot, though; it was almost sixty-five degrees that afternoon! That is very tropical in contrast to the rest of the year, when the average temperature is around fifty and everybody wears sweaters and fleece all the time.

I imagined that the trees were soaking the light up, eating greedily at all of the energy that pours down upon us.

Sometimes this is how I feel about information and facts. The facts, the knowledge, the information, it is all around us, pouring down upon us in an unquenchable flood all the time.

But sometimes I end up being the only one who is soaking up the truth of things that are around us—identifying the true name of each tree, measuring the distances among trees, estimating the length of the roots, calculating the effects of climate change upon each one, and estimating the amount of time it would take me to climb each and every tree in my vicinity.

Why am I the only person I know who seems capable of doing these things? Am I the only one who cares? Am I the only one who can feel that sunlight of knowledge soaking into us at every moment?

There is an ocean of light around us. We are surrounded by it. We swim in it. We move through it every day. But I am the only one who seems to have my eyes open. I am the only one who can see it.

Sometimes, this is very lonely.

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