Broken tree in a desolate place

One among many
Morrisburg, ON
January 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

The scene: I'm standing in a parking lot in Morrisburg, Ontario, looking across the highway at a stand of trees. In the middle of overwhelming life events, I find staring at trees - or crumbling barns, or checkerboard floors, or hamburgers, or old cars, a morgue, or whatever - to be calming, as if looking at random, trivial, inanimate objects can fix the universe. Of course it can't, but as long as you're in the moment, you feel a little better. And that's probably good enough.

I'm originally drawn to these trees for two reasons: 1) There isn't much else to look at out here, and 2) I like the straight-line geometry of the scene. Except when I look more closely in the viewfinder, I notice one of the trees is broken. And not just broken. REALLY broken, like that YouTube video of Lawrence Taylor breaking Joe Theismann's leg on Monday Night Football that makes you squeamish the 20th time you've watched it.

I momentarily consider not taking the picture because it no longer represents my original intent. Then I stop myself, because who says the original intent was optimal in the first place? Maybe there were other stories to be told. Maybe it's OK if you allow things to evolve as they were meant to evolve.

So I stare back into the viewfinder, focusing on the broken tree. I notice it's surrounded by countless other trees. It doesn't stand alone. Rather, it stands protected despite its own rather precarious state.

As I get back into the car and continue toward my father-in-law's hospital room 150 km to the right of this photo, it dawns on me that the community-of-trees metaphor is an appropriate one. Because we, too, are surrounded by a community that stands ready to help, no matter how broken we may be at the moment.

It's why, challenging as life for us may be right about now, I'm thankful to be that one tree among many. I can't imagine what it must be like to stand alone.

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