I was sitting in the hard hollow of a beech
tree's arc and yet I was confortable. It wasn’t a large tree and nor was I high
up but it was a tree with a view. From the base of Scrabo tower in Country
Down, Northern Ireland you see the Mourne ‘mountains’ resting sullenly to the
south, while Strangeford Lough curls its way to the expanse of rarely blue
Irish Sea to the east. Newtownards stands at the foot of the tower’s hill but
its presence doesn’t produce anything worth looking at and fortunately it was
out of view.(sorry if you're from there). I sat in that tree as I took a break from ruining a quite pleasant
walk, or golfing, if you’d prefer. It was the heart of summer, if seasons had
anatomy, and the ground was getting hot under the mid afternoon sun.
Not quite
alone, I shared the tree with birds and probably other living things, which
were too small for me to notice. The tweeting of the birds was a welcome break
from silence as they squawked, mocking golfer’s miscalculated shots or laughing
at the men who lacked skill to even consider calculation. Lying by the trunk of
the tree grew flowers, which, at some expense to description, I couldn’t
identify. However they injected a splash of colour into the veins of endless
blades of grass. I found myself surrounded by a natural beauty, which would
only become more beautiful over the coming months as autumn trickled in as a
gorgeous amber calm before the storm of winter. Some fine and slender mists of stratus
cloud lay motionless on the horizon like a dab of cream on top of a coffee world. I was
relatively at peace here, away from the hustle and bustle of Belfast that stood
large and grey 10 miles behind me. In my tree I saw a cleaner world and watched
it with a quieter state of mind.
A comparatively cool breath whispered at my
face, freshening the humid air and I thought for a brief moment that all was right
with the world. I was younger then, 15 years old. For me, at that age even the
worst problem was really no trouble at all, had I experienced something truly
grave. I’m 20 now and don’t claim to be any wiser, merely jaded, perhaps more
cynical. I learn more every day about how the world works and usually want to
unlearn it that night as the realization that I cant change it hits.. I sit and wonder about what our system and
structure of life is all about, until my head hurts and I recognize that I
don’t know what I’d have put in its place. I’m not sure I like money. Is it a
lack of money that creates the poor or is it moneys very existence that forces
someone to sleep in an alleyway? That has someone starve because they have no
food. Perhaps all the worst excesses of poverty are caused by moneys pretty
central role in today's system. Who knows. I certainly don't.
