The Watchers

Scattered throughout the land around my home are some very majestic trees. They are Coast Live Oaks and they are often a sight to behold with their gnarled trunks and branches. A full grown specimen can reach 25 meters and 250 years. I love them; to me they seem to exemplify an honest, if not pretty, life. They have stood watch over these valleys for several centuries and could they talk, I think they’d have wonderful tales to tell.

I’m a bit jealous actually; I love history. I am captivated by books and stories of life in days-gone-by and often find myself wondering how I’d fare if suddenly transported back in time. Would I have stood with the American revolutionary forces or would I have been a loyalist to the Crown? Would I have adamantly stated to the powerful authority of the day that the Earth, in fact, rotates about the sun and not the other way around? I often wonder, uncomfortably, if I’d have passed the great moral tests of history. Would I have risked everything to allow a stranger refuge in my attic or under my floorboards simply because it was the right thing to do? Would I have had the courage to fight for what was unquestionably right when so many others screamed otherwise; would I have had the strength of conviction to stand alone?

I of course hope that I would have passed these tests and been a forefather worthy of my descendant’s pride. There’s not much I can do but live an honest life and hope that if history calls me I will make the kind of choices my children and their children will be happy to recount. I often stand beneath these grand trees and hope that perhaps in the wind I’ll hear a whisper, a tiny bit of guidance for the road ahead. I hear nothing; they simply watch.