If you listen there are lessons all around. We had every kind of weather in one day that you could think of-- except for snow. By eleven the sky clouded, At eleven thirty we had a terrible storm that knocked the limbs off of trees and threatened to turn off power lines. By half past twelve the sky was full of sun.

Walking back home the sycamore speak an important lesson. Or maybe they just live it. Here there are the tallest, mightiest trees, and in every storm they lose the most limbs. They always drop leaves. And they are always powerful and strong despite their losses, never fighting the way nature leads. Around the lake the sycamores grow at a slant, even the ones thirty feet from the water do not grow up, but rather sideways in the direction of water, knowing that eventually they will reach the source if it takes a century. And it will take a century and more. To trees it does not matter.