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Size depends on the span of the measuring stick, or more precisely, on the size and foraging ambit of the organisms dwelling on the tree. Wilson goes on to notice that “in the fractal world, an entire ecosystem can exist in the plumage of a bird. ” For me, the snow goose exemplišes this expanded view of scale. To really consider its place in a scale, I need to include its proximate animals as well. Because scale requires at least two compared bodies, the isolated bird loses its prominence in my mind.

They are shallow, transient, and cold. 22 absence and light meditation: six Now the yellow willows writhe along the ditches. Now they cradle a great horned owl, now they quiver at the departure of a hungry cormorant. Van Gogh knew; Pissarro knew. Monet knew the convoluted praise of such branches, how light can become tangled. Each tree is a lace of life, each twig a reaching. No tree is wooden. A night heron stands squat and perfectly still under the tendrils of the strange trees. A slender šsh seeks their shade.

A green shore appears through the trees. Lake Natashia is like dozens I’ve paused at in the high Cascades, a refreshing and mysterious opening in the woods. The trees rush up right to the water’s edge. absence and light When I šrst encountered the Cascade lakes, I remember, I felt secure. I saw them as enclosed spaces, like homes or wombs. I knew their demise meant meadows; I watched the duff fall into the water from the wooded shores. I admired their weedy beds exposed by high summer drought. In the shallows, the ripples of sand and pumice struck me as decorative, and the lakes conšrmed my belief in impermanence.