The spirits of Forest Auditorium

There's something about the way sunlight falls, through an oak's boughs, through an ash, and onto stone - that is hard to capture with a few words. It's harder to capture with a picture, which is worth a thousand words, but if I played a song about it, you might understand. It's would sound like Bach, rolling melodies over an evolving harmony. Progressions that are organic, that breath, grow. Melodies that are ephemeral, that disappear and come back. There's a slow pulsing to the whole thing, a current of energy, a cosmic background radiation. Maybe our own universe started with a song?

The part of me that is compelled to say that, is the same part of me that took a picture of this outside of Coker Arboretum, taken not for the sake of the picture, but for the sake of telling you about it.



Again, there's just something about a yellow flower in the sun, and there's something about meeting an old friend in the forest. I'm speaking, of course, of a flower (and not the one pictured above), Jewelweed. In these dusty, red clay hills, we can hardly meet soon enough. A flower, I love. Now, there is a flower I love, that catches my eye, but she's far away in the mountains, and I'm not talking about a plant.

I'm telling you about a trolling melody, spritely, furtive. A compliment to this organic heart, to these red clay bones. Over and above, we will converge again, masterfully, as if played by skillful hands on the keys of a pianoforte, or as sun light falling through an oak.