Meditative Prose
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Cottonwoods & Lake Champlain
Wednesday afternoon I got out of work two and a half hours early, and rode my bike to a stand of young cottonwood trees that overlook the lake. I have gone past these trees many times, but never noticed them until Nick, Will, Sarah and I stopped there one beautiful afternoon in May on our way south to Oakledge Park. Now that spot is almost sacred to me. The trees have slender trunks, furrowed gray bark, and elegant spade-shaped leaves. When I first saw them, strings of pea-sized green pods were dangling from their branches like pearls. Between then and now, those pearls burst open and released their cargo of cottony seeds into the wind, and the now-brown, dried hemispheres fell and mingled with the grass. They were everywhere Thursday afternoon, some with bits of weathered cotton still clinging to them, as I sat looking at the lake and thinking of old friends and adventures to come.
