Gnarled Wisdom

Gnarled Wisdom
            Rising along a tree-covered trail, I stepped from leafy canopy to bright blue sky over an open ridge, with distant mountains in view beyond blue bay waters.
            Another short turn of the trail, and I stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t seen a mountain lion. I didn’t stumble over a rattlesnake.
            I saw a gnarled old oak tree bending its arms over the trail. The heavier branches were black against the intense blue sky, like an old paper silhouette.
            Smaller nearby trees featured similarly twisted branches, but the big old tree had clearly earned its crooked limbs.
            My grandmother used to stand at her cat claw wooden table, mixing dough for her perfectly crisp-yet-chewy chocolate chip cookies. She cradled the ceramic bowl in one arm, fingers sticking out feebly below, while awkwardly grasping the wooden spoon handle with the other hand. Her fingers and knuckles were so distorted by arthritis that I thought of them as bird claws. It was a mystery how she gripped anything.
            Despite her contorted joints, her hands still did the work she wanted them to do, and she had wise insights to go along with the cookies.
            I was fascinated by my grandmother’s hands, not afraid of them. The serpentine curves of ancient branches have always entranced me. We will never know all the twists and turns that made a branch or a hand look the way it does over long years, but there are many stories behind those shapes.
            May we all honor time spent with trees and people who have gained the wisdom that comes in tandem with aging bodies.
            This week’s Hike Notes, Windy Hill-Betsy Crowder and Meadow Trails, takes readers on the ascending leg of a loop hike in the Windy Hill Open Space Preserve, a place that mixes forests of fir, oak and redwood with open ridgetop views.
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New this week:
Hike Notes 197: Windy Hill-Betsy Crowder and Meadow Trails