I went outside to smell the roses today. The soft petals delicately kissing my fingers as I moved along them. It was the kindest feeling in the world. Above me millions of miles away, the warmth of the ball of energy that we call the sun touching my neck. I was grateful to be there today, to expierence what I didn’t yesterday. Today was a new day and each day has new beginnings, this is what happiness is. The chance to be better today than yesterday.

I used to talk to the trees. Not metaphorically, but literally. Inside I would stare, sometimes feeling like for hours from my kitchen window, watching the large pines in my backyard sway in the wind, hearing the bristle of the needles rubbing together as the breeze would go over them. The longer I would stare, the more I felt as though they were speaking to me, telling me to come outside to talk. I always gave in and I would run as fast as my little legs would carry me, to hear what they had to say that day. Once I approached them, still blowing in the wind, I would climb onto the roof of my pink plastic playhouse to get a better view – to be higher up with the knowledge of life that I was so desperately eager to learn from.

I looked up, what seemed to be four stories high, pure green with the smell of innocent wood that has yet to be cut. I stared hopeful with my young mind’s imagination running wild. Now, I never really “heard” what the trees said, but I always knew I could go to them for a conversation and somehow, they would talk back. The rhythm of the rustling branches side by side, with ecosystems within that held families of birds, bugs, lizards, and snakes, inscribed with so many mysteries and the roots that gave those same ecosystems life. The longer I stared, the more hyptonized I would become, but not in a bad way, it was a warm feeling.That rhythm would talk to me and I would talk back, sharing its secrets and I would share mine. Allowing my tennis ball sized hand to graze over the branches and feeling the bumps under my finger tips seemed like the best feeling in the world to an eight year old. The internal connection of human and nature was seen to me those days and interwined with the way I see the innocent green around me today.