Her trunk looked and felt like mountain trails or maybe carved river beds. Whatever the image, your eyes could not help but follow the path. A journey following, not carrying, the trunk.

For some, the simple act of rising out of bed is an incredible journey. For others, journeys are miles traveled, places visited, or the view of the earth out of a plane, train, bus, or car window. Journeys can be the distance traveled from one heart to another; or even the departure.  The tree trunk’s journey is curved, bent, and a side trip branch extends outward only to yield to the journey upward. When I leave one room and go to my kitchen to get a cup of coffee, have I journeyed? Or, is that traveling considered something else?

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a journey is a journey is a journey. And maybe that is the whisper. When the heart feels timid and fears to make a journey, to remember all the journeys made before- most of them effortless. Journeying is our natural state it would seem. One journey, like the seasons, folds into another. There is no true arrival. Like the branch, many side trips perhaps, but the journey’s trunk continues upward. To allow the instinct of our eyes to surrender and follow the design. That my heart may trust the roots and the seasons. And my laughter follow the branches.