We Are All Connected

As we left my Aunt Gene and Uncle George's home on the West coast of Florida we asked them where we might enjoy stopping as we made our way North along that unfamiliar part of the state. They suggested a little town named Micanopy, which retains much of its old Florida sensibilities in architecture and attitudes. 

As we drove into the town, there was a sense of leaving the busy pace of highways, cities and modern suburbia behind. Gary and I gladly got out of our car and stretched. We wandered the streets, enjoying the quaint architecture of the houses and shops, permeated by a sense of a town that had held onto its sense of self in the midst of modernity. We were especially drawn to the enormous Live Oak Trees that could be seen in most of the yards. 

Gary had me stand in front of a particularly large tree as a way of showing the scale of it, and while I was standing there waiting for him to snap a picture, a young man called out to me from the porch of the house where he had been sitting talking with a young woman I took to be his partner. I returned their greeting, and the two of them made their way over to me as Gary arrived from across the street as well.

"All the trees you see around here are actually just one tree," he said. "They are all connected underground. The roots run all through this land, under the ground in this whole town and out beyond it as well."

Gary and I expressed our awe and amazement about the sheer magnificence of the tree we stood beneath and looked around at other trees that we could also see nearby. We stood there with our companions, just quietly taking it in for a while. Standing in that sweetly iconoclastic old town under those spreading moss-hung branches eased something inside of me. It felt like we were participating in some form of holy communion, soaking in the sacred presence of the Oak that literally surrounded us on all sides, towering over us and running beneath our feet. 

After a while I felt moved to try and express what I was feeling. "Everything we see is one ancient, beautiful old tree. Wow. I don't even know how to think about that."

I have read about how trees are connected underground, how their roots help them communicate with one another. I had even reflected on the fact that a small stand of Aspen that grow at the pond near my home are genetically the same organism. But there, in that moment, the concept took on a deeper meaning, a sharper reality for me. This is how the world is meant to be, I thought. We are all supposed to live in relationship with one another at the deepest level possible. We are, each and every one of us, a part of one another. 

I dare to hope that if we take to heart this basic truth of our existence, it could change the world. At the very least, it will change us.