What the trees know?

“Sometimes I Dream of the Trees”
A meditation on time, memory, and the quiet life of the forest.


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Sometimes I dream of the trees.
Not the ones planted in neat rows outside buildings,
nor the weary ones that line suburban streets,
their roots suffocating under concrete and convenience.

No, I dream of the old trees—
the ones untouched, untamed,
towering monuments to time itself,
who stand in ancient groves where the air breathes different.
Where silence is not absence, but presence.

These trees do not speak in words.
They murmur in creaks and rustles,
in the hush of wind that shifts the leaves like turning pages—
a language older than any tongue we’ve ever known.
You don’t need to understand it.
You just need to listen.

There’s a stillness there that startles,
like the world forgot to keep spinning.
Light filters through in soft shafts,
breaking like holy beams across the forest floor.
Dust dances in it—tiny, weightless galaxies—
and in that hush, time bends and blurs.

You lose track of it.
Hours pass like minutes,
minutes like dreams.
And maybe that’s the point.
Maybe time doesn’t pass here.
Maybe it just waits.

Moss wraps around the trunks like scarves in winter,
soft and cool, welcoming to the touch.
Lichen paints the bark in muted greens and blues,
nature’s quiet graffiti, claiming what man cannot.
Every fallen tree becomes a bridge,
or a bed, or a banquet table for beetles and birds.

In the forest, nothing is wasted.
Decay is not an end,
but a doorway.
Even rot is rich.
Even death gives back.

And isn't that what we fear the most?
That our endings will be empty?
That we will return to the earth
with nothing to offer?

But here,
death feeds life.
One thing falls, another rises.
And so it goes. And so we go.
Everything is transformed.

We, the intruders, walk with heavy steps—
boots on soil, unaware of the songs beneath our soles.
The trees have seen generations rise and fall,
have known stillness longer than we’ve known speed.
And yet they remain,
rooted and resilient,
watching us rush past in pursuit of things that do not matter.

Sometimes I wonder if they pity us.
If, in their quiet wisdom,
they know something we’ve forgotten:
how to stay.
How to wait.
How to grow slow and wide and kind.

When I am old—truly old—
and my skin folds like bark,
and my spine curves like a branch under snow,
perhaps I will remember the forest more clearly than anything else.

I will dream of the hush.
Of the light breaking through green.
Of the soft press of moss beneath my feet.
Of the way the air felt sacred,
like I’d stepped not into a place, but a prayer.

And when the time comes—
when breath leaves me like fog rising in the morning—
maybe I will become a tree,
or return to one.

Let my bones be buried in roots.
Let my stories live on in leaves.
Let time forget me,
so the forest can remember.

Sometimes I dream of the trees, and the dream stretches— a forest unfolding beyond the edge of thought, where time drips like dew and memory clings to bark.

I walk where no path leads, beneath a canopy stitched with light, where sunbeams fall like whispered prayers and every breath tastes of earth and rain.

The trees speak slowly, in the hush between heartbeats, in the groan of ancient limbs that have outlasted empires. They do not rush. They do not need to.

Here, moss is a cradle, cradling fallen things until they bloom again in silence. Rot becomes root. Endings curl into beginnings like sleeping ferns.

The forest does not mourn. It remembers. Every leaf, a story. Every stump, a hymn.

And when I stand still long enough, I feel myself soften— not disappear, but dissolve into something vast and kind. A stillness that doesn’t ask, only welcomes.

So let me become leaf and loam, let my breath join the mist, my bones the bedrock of roots. If I must be forgotten, let it be by the world— not by the trees, who remember everything with grace. And dream me back again

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Thank you for walking with me. If this piece resonated with you, I invite you to explore more stories of nature, memory, and being in the challenge linked belowStart writing...