Träet
Nanna Katrine Hansen
'I have to plant myself' I thought.
I had read that it was best to plant trees in the fall to avoid the dried out soil but before the frost had set. So I decided to plant myself in the fall.
I had to become a tree.
Most want be the protagonist and the hero of the story.
I did not want to be those characters and was tired of hero stories with their universe of singular tales and sharp objects to poke and stick.
I wanted to be the sloping tree in history.
In a sunny place with a small stream and with enough space, I located myself
and let my feet dig down, let them sink deeper and be encircled by the earth.
I dug myself down to my knees and patted the soil around me.
The sun fell on my skin, the rain washed over me and the water ran down my body.
At night the moon shone on me. My skin froze in the winter. My feet froze into the ground.
When it became spring I felt the roots grow from my toes
and from the fingers came buds that sprang out to leaves.
Through them I breathed.
Through the roots I sucked water and nutrients.
Day and night I listened to the roots growing and spreading through the earth.
I sucked power up and circulated it through my body.
Winter came again and the roots stopped their movement.
I noticed that I did not look like the other trees and saw passers-by looking confused at my body, which was not yet completely tree.
With spring, leaves came all over my body.
I was touched by the mycelium network, let me become part of it.
Found paths through the underground path systems and learned to share information and nutrients.
I met the older mother trees that sent more carbon when I needed it and learned from them to heal myself and others.
I vibrated and sang with the other trees.
As I listened to the wind in their leaves and watched their branches bend and bend, I asked myself if what I had done was give up and if others would see it that way?
In the coming spring, the tree in my body exploded, causing my body to startle as if the parts would separate.
The parts of me spread apart.
I became seeds that threw themselves, were scattered by the wind above the ground and floated with the water. Through seeds, bacteria and fungal networks, I moved everywhere on earth.
As the years went by, my surface became rough with deep grooves.
My body hosted ants and spiders.
A cavity formed in me.
Through it the sun shone.
When darkness fell I talked to Venus and the moon,
that stood like an axis above my body.