The Wind — What the Tree Does When It Cannot Hold Still

We are careful with the things we can schedule. We plan the year and keep the weather out of the calendar.

Then something moves that we did not agree to, and we find out what we are made of.

The baobab grows in open country, where wind arrives with nothing in its way. The tree has no way to refuse it. What the tree does with that is most of what the faith keeps pointing at.

What the wood is made of

A baobab’s wood is soft and fibrous. It stores water rather than building the dense heartwood of an oak. The trunk looks like the heaviest thing in the landscape, and it is not.

Light wood in a wide trunk makes a tree that can move. Where a stiff tree holds its ground against a gust until something gives, the baobab gives with the gust and comes back.

It goes with the wind

Nothing in the tree decides this. It is what the wood allows. The pattern is still worth naming, because we tend to do the opposite.

Faced with a force we cannot stop, most of us brace. We tighten, and we spend everything on not moving. That effort is often the thing that cracks us.

The tree that comes through a storm is rarely the hardest one. A tree with give in it can be pushed all afternoon and still stand where it started.

What holds it down

A baobab does not keep its place with a deep taproot. Its roots spread wide and stay close to the surface. The tree is held by breadth more than depth.

We tend to look for one deep tie to hold us. The tree suggests another arrangement. Many small holdings, spread out, can carry a load that a single strong one will not.

We have written before about what roots know about place and time. The roots do not reach down to one fixed thing. They reach outward, into soil they share with everything else.

A practice for the week

Pick one thing this week that you are bracing against, something you cannot stop by holding still. Notice how much effort goes into not moving.

Then let the force do what it will for an afternoon, the way the trunk does. Keep your feet where they are. Let the top of you move.

We have written before about what holds us when everything shakes. It comes down to the same thing: knowing what is under you before the wind starts.

We tend to call this giving up. It is closer to what the tree does every season of its life, and the tree is still here.

Wind does not ask permission and does not explain itself. The tree has never been given a reason. It leans with the wind, and when the air settles it is still standing where it was.

What are you trying to hold still that would rather move?

The Eye watches. The Tree stands. The Delve awaits.