🌱Seed 😐Neutral 🟡Consideration 📖Story 🔥Doctrine-Poetry-Story
The Big Idea
Or the story behind the naming this the Aspen Grove
Aspen trees never used to mean much to me. I’d look out into the forest and see an unformed mass of green and brown. Until one day, a memory was frozen into my brain.
I was sixteen - old enough to be confident I understood the world - and young enough to believe it.
I was on the epic adventure of boy scouting: backpacking in the back country of New Mexico. We hiked up and down the mountains of the Philmont reservation carrying everything we needed on our backs. On this particular day, we had hiked from the early light of dawn until the trees turned into vague pillars passing by. As we arrived at our campsite for the night, the last rays of sun slipped behind the mountain. Flashlights bobbed and dropped as we fumbled to set up out tents in the dark. The fumbling increased in fervor as a cool stormy breeze began to blow. The exhausted frantic shuffle ensued as one by one tents took shape before the coming rain. I remember zipping my tent’s door right as a boom of thunder echoed against the mountain’s heavy sides. That night can only be described as breath taking. The rush of the rain and the whipping of the trees was only drowned out by deep rumbles of the ground beneath me.
To my surprise, I woke the next morning to the soft bubble of a stream. I hadn’t noticed it the night before. As I emerged from my little burrow, I stepped into the middle of a perfectly untouched aspen grove. The calm completely captivated me. Cream trunks surrounded us in every direction with the little creek winding its way past. The light softly filtered through bright green leaves as if the storm the night before was only a dream.
At that moment, aspen trees began to mean something to me. But the amazing thing about aspens is that no aspen is alone. Under the surface, all those individual trees are growing together as one. Each connected to the other by the roots. When I learned that, the image of that night only became that much richer.