My favorite tree is the Cottonwood. There are some who say she is a whisper tree. A sort of sage that grasps secrets from the ether and gifts wisdom on the wind to those who would listen, telegraphing fortunes on fluttering leaves. The waxy click clack on the summer warmth sounds like the ocean to me, but I wonder if there’s a deeper message in that current.
Like an ancient oracle, she makes the journeyer come to her, on river beds and dark ponds where the water hides on the prairie. She forms the boundaries of the meandering Smoky Hill and drives water to distant places. I wonder, does her wisdom come from that murky water and does she read from the book of stories that the river writes on its journey from the mountain to the sea. When the north comes, and her whisper leaves turn golden and fall, what then. Does she sleep or like the brown eagle in her branches, does the Cottonwood watch us trod a lonely path in the cold. [Please see the Fall section for my latest moon which celebrates the month of the falling leaves.]
