Looking for a Rufous

OK, the first post with the picture of the tree and the long caption has been sitting there for a few days, maybe it’s time to explain or expand on what I meant.

First of all, as you probably noticed, the tree in the picture isn’t an oak. I selected it at random out of a bunch of pictures I took on a trip to Houston, my other hometown – I live in Portland, Oregon, but grew up in Texas. I think it’s a Crepe Myrtle, but that’s only a guess. The circle in the middle is kind of cool. Isn’t it interesting how trees will grow around a weakness or injury.

Here’s a bit more to explain the long caption. By the way, I did a blog post last fall titled “Doing Nothing” (it’s in the archives under “Things to Think About”) . The tone of this post is similar. Anyway, to explain the post from earlier this week, I was relaxing in my back yard, just sitting in my comfortable swing, rocking back and forth. It was a really nice spring evening, not too hot or too cold, and dry with a bit of a breeze, and the sun was going down. The tree I was looking at was a large oak tree, fully leafed out. It was back-lit by the dusky sunlight and was fairly dark except for one spot in the center where a ray of light broke through. Stay with me on this, you may have to use your imagination. To me, the dark rounded shape of the oak tree, kind of shaped like your head or your brain and the penetrating ray of light made me think of or represented how a thought or an idea might occur to me. To extend this “thinking analogy” a bit more, there is an ash tree in my yard, but it is bare of leaves. The bare branches curving and stretching out in different directions made me think of neural pathways in the brain. I guess my point is, it’s good to relax and loosen up the thinking processes. You never know what ideas might come up.