WHISPER THE NAME LARCHTO ME
I am a child of the clouds. I came to this earth like stardust from above. My first cradle lay high in the stony meadows of the Alps. This is my country. This is where I belong, up in the mountains, in touch with the sky; floating and free. As a descendant of Stratus, Cirrus, and Cumulus, the feeling of emptiness is not alien to me. Like a cloud, I fill myself up with the open and the light. The wetness grows within me, spreading itself out like a blanket on the hillsides around. A life down in the valleys below would be unbearable for me: too heavy, too loud, and too stifling. Fine – not coarse, gentle – not hard, quiet – not noisy; these are my qualities.
In the course of time, small things have grown up around me. Mosses, grasses, and berried bushes now adorn my fields. They too share my lightness of spirit. And so, I am not alone.
Only rarely do people walk by. Their strange smells and shrill sounds penetrate my senses. Like clumsy intruders, they steal the silence of our forest. With their heavy boots, they trample on my sensitive roots. Their calls and laughter are foreign to me. Strange they are, these people from the valleys. Always searching, never arriving and staying, always looking for the next thing. They collect fruit from the forest floor and much ends up in their bags. Some things also come out: water, for example (as if there wasn’t enough of it here), food (exotic provisions from faraway lands), and weird boxes for “picture taking” as well as square glass blocks for “chatting” (all of this I do not understand). If they would just listen to me instead. I would ask them to fill their senses with handfuls of awareness and sensuality. I would tell them to lay off their boots, their jackets, to set down their packs, and to step into the cool, flowing streams where ice still has a refreshing crush to it. I would tell them to come slowly to me, to stand next to me, and to pause in my stillness.
Sometimes the clouds embrace me with such force that I feel like being carried back up to the airy spheres where I came from. Would people notice my absence? The fine, the gentle, and the quiet are so quickly gone and forgotten. All that would remain would be the coarse rustling of winds on stony meadows and the grumbling sounds from the valleys below.
Home:
France, Maritime Alps, Hautes-Alpes, Guillestre, Ubaye Valley
Tree species:
Larix decidua
Tree family:
Pinaceae, pine
Common Names:
European larch
Motivation:
An unforgettable hike in the French Hautes-Alpes. At the village Chapelle Saint-Antoine-du-Désert à Maurin, we left the last signs of human existence behind. We set off into the world of mountain peaks, clouds, ice, and larches.