Walking the World: Stone Pine Mountain

The Earth is not everywhere old. Hidden away wherever we look are these little places where life is just beginning anew. It is as if the Earth prefers to sing its song all at once, with hesitant, vulnerable fresh sproutings sounding together with the sure and steady magnificence of great age.

At the upper edge of a mature subalpine forest, where the larches and pines
take over from the Norwegian spruce, the forest canopy begins to open up with
more space between the individual trees. Here, a stone pine seedling has rooted
itself on top of a large granite rock. Just half a hand high, emerging out of but
the thinnest trace of soil covered with a small patch of moss and a scatter of fallen
pine needles, this little tree already resonates with a presence which says, "this—
is my place to be."

And so, a solitary seed, perhaps dropped on this rock by a careless nutcracker,
unfolds into tree out of almost nothing, itself calling forth the matrix of energies
which will create the soil it needs for future growth. Tiny as it now is compared
to the ancient thick-stemmed, weather-beaten pines which surround it, this seedling
is wholly tree, wholly present in this movement of life. A movement which, like
the shimmering high country waterfall, is forever beginning and ending, all
at the same time, everywhere, at once.