Life has never been easy, but it’s always been nice. I only see full sunlight for a couple of hours each day as the sun passes over the gap in the canopy, but the soil is black and living, and there is always plenty of water.
Each season, I grow taller. I stretch my branches toward the sky and dream of what it will be like to be in the canopy with the other trees. They call me “sapling” and tell me stories. Even The Ash, who watched all of them grow from sprouts, was once a sapling like me.
Not just like me, of course. The Ash made seeds that fluttered in the wind to spread far and wide, but – one day soon, I hope – I will make acorns that will be carried away by squirrels, buried and forgotten, to sprout the next spring.
The Ash also needed younger ash trees nearby to pollinate her flowers. When she was smaller, she was a he, and pollinated the older, larger ash trees. But I have both kinds of flowers. I wonder what that would be like to need someone else? It sounds scary.
I wonder how she would have felt if she was all alone? Being alone sounds nice to me sometimes. Especially when I know I could be growing so much bigger and taller if I could get more sunlight. The other trees are polite, of course, but… I know they need the sun too, and they keep getting taller, and spreading out, and the canopy gap The Ash left me keeps getting smaller. It feels like a race, to get to the canopy before the others shade me completely. Before I become nothing more than a scrub.
The Ash used to tell of the things she could see on the horizon. She was taller than any other tree, so her horizon was farther away. Some of the trees sigh, and say it’s not true, but the others swear they can taste the dust when the wind blows the right way.
There is a desert, far to the south. A place where there is no rain. This sounds terrible to me. I know I struggle to get enough sunlight, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to have so much sun that it dried out my leaves, and so little water that I would shrivel up and die.
I like where I am. It is a good place. One day, I will be in the canopy, and I will have everything I need.