The Sleeping Elephant And The Tree

My enduring courtship with a place and two of its gentlest sentinels.

I have loved a single tree in a desert canyon campground for nearly three decades; have somehow grown old as it has grown up. I have dozed beneath it, cooked a hundred meals beside it, introduced myself to its visiting lizards and Lazuli buntings, prayerful insects and a lonely owl. I have hung bundles of wild mint from a nail someone hammered into its trunk, there to dry without scorching on sweltering afternoons; have trimmed its torn branches, shared my water and unburdened my heart to it countless times. I have sat within its cooling shade and beneath the sea of stars that arc above it on summer nights while gazing downriver at a sleeping elephant who dozes nearby, ever awed, endlessly curious, completely lovestruck and free of any need for judgement.

The sleeping elephant lifting an eyelid, momentarily…

The elephant and this tree became entangled for me one evening nearly twenty years back, when a barefoot, six-year-old stood beside me and the tree, pointing to the mountain and whispering into my ear, introducing me to the elephant I had been gazing toward, yet not seeing for at least a decade. Her sleeping elephant has been my guardian and friend ever since.

There are really no shortcuts to this sort of love affair, but there may be a roadmap,

of sorts…

The tree was barely bigger than a sapling when I first began camping beside it nearly thirty years ago.

The big dipper and the sleeping elephant

The sleeping elephant at sunrise.