eucalyptus groves

The trees here. So many of them are old and creaky, frozen in their wind-blown shapes, leaning away from the wind with their branches yet still firm in their roots.

 

I especially love the eucalyptus groves. Those in the middle grow straight and wheat-like while those on the edges have a few branches raised against the wind as if they've thrown up their hands to protect their faces from the salt air.

 

 

Standing amongst them, their scent settles down over you in the softest way -- almost ephemeral -- but it keeps coming down and down, settling around your neck.

 

And oh the bark on these trees. Much like birch, it flakes off in elegant, papery swaths. The new bark revealed underneath is soft and smooth, pulled taught against the trunk. It creates a visual depth. All I want to do is run my fingers through it like hair at the nape of someone's neck. The illusion breaks as soon as you touch it, but it is beautiful all the same.

 

 

The eucalyptus stands here are on the Monarch Butterfly's route. When they're traveling, the beauty of the grove turns delicate as thousands of butterfly wings are added to the twirling leaves and pealing bark. Everything flutters and tree blends with wing and pretty soon you're struck with the vast number of creatures. At first glance all appears brown with only flashing sparks of orange until you look carefully and see clumps of butterflies hanging off one another in great pillars because there isn't enough branch to go around.

 

 

So often returning to childhood memories I find that the world has shrunk. What was a great, unreachable buttress is only a short twisted tree. The miles on miles of concrete sidewalk leading to the elusive stop-sign corner isn't even a block. But those trees. Those trees are still just as ethereal... just as rooted in the sky.