trees are smart too

It is February 15th and today I climbed a tree barefoot.
It wasn't entirely intentional. I ate lunch in my favorite spot overlooking the walkway under the Hood museum and just as I was thinking about sleeping for the first time in 29 hours I looked up and it was smiling at me. At first I couldn't get up because it was so old and so big. I was about to give up when the tree told me to take my shoes off, and I listened because it is much older than me, and when I stepped back to drop my sock I found the lone, slender branch, extended straight out above me. Sometimes you just have to remember that trees are smart too.

When I had clambered up and given my cold-shocked muscles a chance to relax I watched the sparse but steady flow of pedestrians beneath me. They thought they were being smart by not looking straight at me, but they didn't know that I was higher than them and I could watch them catch me in my glance, look away, and smile to their scholarly selves. I thought about how silly it is that we spend so much energy avoiding awkward eye contact that might imply a social obligation to be friendlier than we are particularly feeling, or to spend more time with a stranger than we would prefer to lose. And I thought that maybe if more people climbed trees we wouldn't feel so alone.