Got to jog through one of my #favorite #tree areas today I’ve named it the #CathedralOfTrees kind of a nice moment in a difficult “run” #running #fitness #endurance #trees

When I was young, I was scared of the wind -- well, maybe not "scared", rather "deeply apprehensive". I didn't like it. There's an infamous story of my mother looking out the window at me around age 5, sitting on a swing set in the winter and yelling up at the sky for god to stop the wind.

I never outgrew that feeling, but I've often turned over *why* it bothered me as a child. It always felt like the wind was talking to me -- not in words, but in feelings. Sometimes it told things that were true, but as often as not it was "tricky" -- telling me things I was pretty sure were not correct, like an uncle telling tall tales and waiting to see if I believed them.

My discomfort with wind has persisted into adulthood. I am 47 now, and still find strong wind as unsettling as I do exhilarating. Short of a brief foray into psychedelics in my 20s and a terrible thunderstorm in the backwoods of Algonquin Park about 5.5 years ago, it stopped talking to me when I left childhood behind. Or maybe I stopped paying attention.

It is interesting to me, as I enter another very different stage of life, that I can hear those whispers again when I'm walking in the woods. The trees talk when the wind is blowing if you let yourself listen.

#cathedraloftrees #getoutside #thisis47