skonen_blades

How many soldiers have died on beautiful days? In the movie, most war takes place in muddy trenches under grey European skies, oppressive Vietnam jungle heat or the oven of the Middle Eastern desert.

But I’m willing to bet plenty of battles took place under clear blue skies in the middle of nice meadows. I wonder how bizarre that would be. To fight on a patch of land that you’d much rather be having a picnic on. To shoot, stab, yell, bleed and die near a river that’s perfect for a lazy rowboat ride and a little fishing. I wonder what kind of disconnect takes place in the mind of a soldier when that happens.

If your surroundings are hellish then it all makes sense.

But what if it’s a scenic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off kind of day? One, maybe two clouds in the sky and the temperature just right for a stroll without a jacket. Nice green grass, maybe a nearby forest or small town. The Earth presenting itself like the garden of Eden. A siren song making every human animal want to maybe have a nap in the shade or chew on a long piece of grass while aimlessly letting your mind drift?

When you’re firing your guns and your friends are dying around you, is that kind of day something that makes the insanity of war get thrown into even sharper relief or does it even register to a soldier in the grip of battle?

I wonder.




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I’m surrounded by the riot of colour that fall’s death throes bring.

The trees catch fire and die in flashes of orange, yellow and red. It makes summer seem boring. There’s a feeling to fall like time’s running out. The light panic of dying.

I live here in the trees. I’m a wood nymph. Tiny, camouflaged and invisible to most human eyes. I revel in my attachment to the woods. I’m familiar with all of the other nymphs around me. We chatter across the gulfs to each other like squirrels. We can touch each other if the branches of our trees rub together.

And the trees themselves. They think such slow, comforting thoughts. I nestle in the elbowed creases of their forks and listen to the eddied whorls of their notions. Each thought is a concept that takes years to form, adding another ring to the inside. I have to pay attention to understand it because it forms so quietly and takes so long.

Each tree is different. Each nymph is different also. For instance, Loveleaf-To-My-Left, the nymph next to me, is allergic to pollen, female, a darker green and much longer than me.

I have a name for myself, taken from my tree’s thoughts. It is a long name. A concept from when my tree and I were young together and the future was endless. It is a name of hope and challenge.

Loveleaf-To-My-Left calls me Underskin-Touchbranch-Reacher. She has a name for herself, based on the ridges of her tree’s bark. We name each other. We name ourselves. The names we give ourselves are secret. The names we give each other we repeat over and over to the forest when we talk.

Right now, the wind is playing with the weakened leaf stems, plucking them off one by one. My skin is peeling and my hair in falling out. Soon, I will go blind and lie lifeless in the embrace of a knothole in the trunk.

The tree and I will lie still through winter and dream of spring.




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