Trees in Mist

There is nothing as strikingly alive and conscious and intent and majestic and wise as a tree in mist. I think it's because the mist places the tree on the boundary between the visible and the invisible, and so as you look at it, head tilted right back, mouth hanging open, eyes dry, it is permanently in a state of arrival, and you are experiencing the moment when trees came to our planet for the very first time, and you are wondering if they have come in peace or for mutual benefit or to crush everything they consider a threat into tiny pieces.

I also think it's because the mist makes the air the place where things are really happening. No longer does the world start with the greenness under your feet and stop a couple of metres in the air, while a bunch of other lifeforms take it all too far and keep going up way beyond the level where things are still people. Instead it shows you that there was always much more above the ground than on the ground, and that you should look up, and when you do look up at the world above your head and find it full of dark, mandelbrot-skinned personalities in smoky gowns, you will always feel like a mouse or an insect that has just run into the place where the giants meet.

But no, these are not the giants who will raise a casual foot and with it make your life tiny, dark and short. Nor are they here to validate your self-consideration. They are tactile. You can tell from the way they let you feel their furry flesh from hundreds of metres beneath their vast bodies with your eyes. They are made to be looked at, made to be touched by awe-struck minds. They are proud and particular and unique, and they are not particularly interested in you. I love to see trees in mist because they are beautiful, so beautiful and because they yield to me, unthinkingly, the consolation of my insignificance.