Patterns in The Trees

Forest from above

And I'm about to do what I'm about to write about.

Imagine riding in a helicopter, hovering atop a forest – or a gathering of trees. You can't exactly tell if they were planted by the calculated and cerebral yardstick of rationality, or the patient hand of nature.

Your friend points to a certain area and says, "look – it's all planted in triangles."

You follow his gaze and without too great a leap of the imagination you, too, see the triangles.

At this point, you may begin to look elsewhere, finding that your friend's claim works charmingly at organizing the forest below you as the blades above your head upset the air around them.

For a time, you enjoy the satisfaction that joins the feeling of holding a key to a door many don't realize is a door, and a door that might be opened.

Yet you begin to notice here and there, trees not conforming to your harmonizing scheme.

One option is to ignore their presence and rest in the satisfaction that came with the order of your simple and elegant model.

Perhaps in your attachment to the feeling of holding the grail, you complicate your model to allow for mild or even medium variance. Your ship has sprung a leak and you patch it as best you can.

Yet even with amendments and addenda and appendices, you continue to notice variances, outliers, wrinkles. This frustrates you.

In this frustration you may wish to drop to the floor of the forest and run the helicopter blades through the trees, cutting so this eccentrically shaped peg can fit through your triangular hole. This would be unwise, as deep down you understand where it leads.

Your other option, of course, is to take the copter blades to your beloved model and embrace the understanding that these woods offer infinite interpretations. On the helicopter ride yesterday one friend told the other that the trees grew in the shape of interlocking π symbols. The day before that, the trees were said to grow like peanuts. 

The gift these woods offer is the momentary understanding, the fleeting feeling of godliness, in finding order where there may be none.

But the real gift they offer is the humble attitude born in understanding that the only pattern which encompasses the forest accurately and entirely, is the forest itself.

And I've just done what I just wrote about.

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