“Small Stone” in a Stand of Trees

Down the path I see trees–weedy looking desert trees.  I haven’t seen real trees like back home in Michigan since I was in California.  Is it this way all through middle and southern Arizona?

Cacti, creosote, and then the trees: mesquite, palo verde, sweet acacia (which makes everyone sick in their sinuses).  All self-contained and meagre, hardy, like you have to be just to survive in the desert.  By their very foreignness, the desert inhabitants make me homesick for my past, for a vision of Michigan that exists only in my memory.

Then I walk close to a tree and, gazing in, I see the tangle of life and in the confusion I see that this is the way it is meant to be.  Far off, the threads of memory, and up close, the everyday details.

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For more on “small stones,” you can read my first post on the subject.  It’s all about this: find a moment in which to be  mindful and record it.