Dear Birch--There is a spring and a tree.

Dear Birch,

There is a land of hills north of my Mid Equinox Desert. These hills were formed when the waters melted and covered the face of the earth. Water sat over them, and the wind stirred these waters until hills rose up from the volcanic ash like sand on the sea shore. Deer wander these hills, and coyotes, and the hawks fly above them.

In these hills, there stands a tree. I cannot say he lives there, though he was once my friend. Now, the tree stands withered and shrunken, a mere ghost of what he was. He is an empty shell. Limbs hang, broken close to the trunk but still hanging on, and branches have fallen around him, littering the ground like your leaves in autumn. Bees nest in his branches, and woodpeckers have carved out his dead trunk for homes.

“Look at that tree,” a man says as he walks through the hills, miles from any human abode, “It looks as though it were hurting, as though it grew with hardship and died in agony. It is the image of pain.”

Just on the other side of the hill, there stands a spring. Cattails grow around it, and bushes sprout on the grassy banks. The stream is small, but its water flows out through the hills, down and away from the tortured tree, and spills life in the dried up grasses. The spring was so close to the tree, but never lent him her water. He stood there, dying and in pain, but she didn’t even know he was there. So close, but separated forever.

Tell me, Birch, how can one live so close to suffering, yet be unaware?

Your Friend,

Joshua