THE EARTH TAKES CARE OF ITS OWN — Rebekah Van Tinteren

I early-morning walk and my footsteps wake the valley floor. Almost immediately, I am trailed from above by the most curious bird, who sings to me, and a lone, grey squirrel who sounds the alarm of me, scampering up the tallest redwood tree. Tall, but not straight, due to its comrades finding the edible cambium layer beneath the bark in leaner months, ringbarking the treetop. It maneuvers its body around the tiny branches spiking out from the trunk with expert finesse - one eye, untrustingly, on me.

I spy tiny, wild strawberries peeking out from the base of a burnt redwood whose heartwood bled its harbored, ancient wisdom in the last fire of 1931. The strawberries’ newly found and fleshed-out weight makes them appear as though they bow in apt reverence. The burnt stump pales though in comparison to a neighboring stump - eleven hundred rings when they stopped its counting in 1911, with a platform large enough for lovers to stand on, making vows after the turn of this new century.

My eye catches the last of the Shasta daisies making way for the newest, barely pink to scarlet thimbleberries overhead; tart, and yet already just sweet enough to eat.

And then, unexpectedly, I spot the discarded horsetail ‘swords’ that the children played with a few weeks ago. Flattened against decaying leaf litter, they are already paler in shade than when in active duty, and now partially covered by the forest canopy’s most recent offerings. It was quite a battle. I smile at the memory of their shrill voices echoing off the side of the mountain, bodies charging ahead, hands raised in unrealized praise of the hallowed ground beneath their feet and unknowing that the eyes of the forest behold them - kings. And two queens.

Enveloped by burgeoning fingers, as in the making of a slow motion fist, the horsetails now look resigned to be enshrouded and peacefully at home, taking their place in the way of the forest floor. And I am struck by this one resounding thought: “The earth takes care of its own”.