Ents and Avalanches
I woke up this morning thinking about Ents and avalanches. I think trees represent something profoundly comforting, and also something wildly exciting. They were always my hiding place and ‘den‘ as a child. Whenever we went away on a holiday I would often be looking for a potential place of vertical refuge. We had a large weeping willow in our garden, and whenever life troubled me, I would lodge myself in its branches to retreat and think, drawing unconscious comfort from the beauty of nature and the solidness of the tree itself. But trees were more than a comfort, they were an adventure, a place of imagining wild stories and other possibilities. Trees had an element of danger (especially if they were very high and hard to climb) and their wildness stimulated my imagination. Even before I read Lord of The Rings, they were sleeping giants who, if roused, could wreak mighty acts of vengeance upon any presumptuous enemies who trespassed their holy forests... These two dimensions of safet