Dearest Readers,
Toronto the Good. Toronto, the city of my youth. I was born and spent my earliest years in the Yukon but Toronto is where I grew up. It was here where I had my innocence ripped away, where I made the transformation from child to adolescent and from adolescent to young woman. This city evokes so many memories for me both fond and ferocious.
I’m staying with some friends in their rented condo in the Yorkville area and the view from the guest room looks eastward. I can see clumps of buildings and a wide swath of sky but what’s really standing out are the trees. Toronto has enormous trees. There is one in particular that has caught my eye. It’s a couple of blocks away so I can’t tell exactly what kind it is but it is surely hundreds of years old, quietly presiding over all the others around it.
It’s easy to forget trees are there. We kind of take them for granted. But when I connect to the fact that trees are living, breathing entities it’s rather extraordinary to think that they are standing guard all around us like soldiers on watch, our silent protectors.
A recent cartoon in the New Yorker depicted 2 trees talking to one another. One of them was saying, “Can you believe human beings, like, breathe in our waste? Gross.”
We forget that part, too. Our very survival depends on trees. Sure, we remember it because the eco-warriors use it as a way to get us to pay attention and fair enough, we need to. But what about just taking the time to reflect on the amazing fact itself? What we breath out, they breathe in, what they breathe out, we breathe in. How practical and prudent is this Creator!
I’m in this city for both business and pleasure and I love getting “citified” after long stretches in the isolated North but this weekend I’m going to take the time to notice and acknowledge the trees of Toronto. Their size and stature is so magnificent. And like me, they’ve grown up here.
Inspiring Message of the Day: Out of sorrow’s lonely vale;/… at last the traveller sees/ Light between the trees! ~ Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933)
