This past week I had the opportunity to hike with my niece. We came upon these trees which caught our attention due to their parallel posture. It appeared that over time they must have been forced to bend as they did by some element in nature. We guessed it had been the wind or a long past flood, when waters rose in the nearby creek forcing the young trees to double over.
We marveled at the remarkable position of each tree which appeared so damaged… yet was very much alive.
And we moved on.
The next day, I returned to show Debbie. My intrigue heightened when she pointed out that the tree was actually entangled in vines! This discovery set off in both of us a sense of mission to save the tree.
At first, we were simply removing broken branches that had gotten ‘stuck.’ But as time went on we really had to work together to unwrap some very complicated entanglements.
In some cases, one of us had to pull down and hold a portion of the tree using our full body strength so that the other could wind the ‘branch vine’ up and over and around the tree’s limb.
Other relatively innocent looking vines had infiltrated themselves the entire length and height of the tree, requiring some precise unwinding so as to not break the branches in the process. Unfortunately, as is often the case in life a couple branches got sacrificed in the process.
With each large branch freed we felt a surge of optimism as we witnessed the tree branching higher and stronger up towards the sky. By the time we finished we would never have recognized it as the same tree, except that we had the photos to prove otherwise.
I walked away with hope and a keen renewed awareness to pay attention to the vines. They come in many forms and what entraps one may not even touch another. But their damage is predictable and deadly.
This week, once again nature was the messenger for living well. The vine is doing what the vine does. It is sucking life out of a living being in order to thrive.
Know your vine. Be careful how it can so efficiently wraps itself around your spirit, choking out life.
And when possible, should you notice a vine doing its thing on another… ever so carefully, step off the path and help set them free…