We saw her standing on the roadside along the winding way to the top of the volcano. She was beautiful and tall and her limbs hung down, covered with orchids and ferns and bromeliads. Around her feet were toadstools, a whole forest of them, offering shelter to small creatures needing to escape the rain.
She was old. How old, only the wind knows. Her bark was wrinkled like the skin of an old Native woman who'd spent a hundred years in the sun. Her girth was so vast that a hug would only wrap around a small portion of her immensity.
I touched her trunk—held my hand there for a moment, just feeling whatever I might feel. Aside from roughness and dampness and softness, I felt a settling come over me, a calmness that drove away my angst as if by magic and made me forget that such things existed.
The old volcano spared her during its last eruption. Its molten rock and hot ash was flung down another slope, away from her spacious spot. I do not think she could have uprooted herself to escape, so I am thankful her life was spared.
So she still stands, flowers and fiddleheads in her hands. And I am grateful for the brief connection we made—she and I—on the side of the road on the way to the top of the volcano.