An afternoon at the Botanics, when perfect, is unlike an afternoon anywhere else. It's hot, and also dry. The wind picks up, soft, and not for long. So it's going to be a stifling kind of walk, but the sooner you make peace with it, the better. Nothing better than a paced sweat. Light fabrics, pockets for music players and keys, soft shoes, a cap, sunglasses. Now it's perfect. The light streams down in lazy sprinkles through golden foliage, oscillating, whispering and innumerable. There are many places to start walking, and there are as many paths to take, so no walk feels quite the same as the others, no instance of music meets with vision at the same point. I choose Bill Evans, or perhaps he chooses me, and you can't really tell with music, can you. There's something dreamy, no, mystical about what he evokes when he plays. Pair that with a little green world, going it alone, nothing else on your mind. It works a charm. The piano, the path, it melds together, the adventure takes.
Now, look at the trees. Trees everywhere. The thing about trees is that they're always there, always a part of the background, a grove here, a cluster there, giants on both sides. And yet a moment happens, a closer inspection, a long glance, and a tree presents itself to you, as if for the first time. Take one, now. It's thick, scaly, perhaps a grey type of brown. Wide, slightly protruding cylinder, slanted for light, wind or weight, and sprouting upwards and manifold. But down below, where roots touch the grass, run haphazard ridges, it's such a creature of essence, of reality. Reach out a foot and touch it, step in the sand that spreads between its toes, balance on the uneven veins running underfoot. It's so rooted, so actual, so existent. So much a creature of itself, of growing, of moments strung together in being. Up above, fresh, tender saplings eke out tiny stalks, branches long and spindly, arms strain at distended angles, odd shapes. Everywhere leaves, then ferns, then palms, then tendrils, then flowers, then fruits, then moss, then bark, then at the same time, everything else that makes up a tree. Green, brown, and gold dominate.
Consider next how much air a tree covers over with its hands, how the quality of light it lets in is just the kind to sustain the kind of grubby, insistent life that takes shelter under these boughs. Know also that there are all kinds of trees, and one is not alike to another. Know them through their fruit? No, they hardly fruit. I know them through their figure, and colour, and the types of leaves that they have, and the type of stripes that run down their bark. I hear a kind of music that runs as well through this race, a meandering sort of sweep to their bodies, sighing as they bend, gurgling as they rustle, now laughing, now weeping, as they caress the wind. Trees, peaceable and calm.
But take a jungle path, and now, silence. Quiet, dark, and hidden, at every side is a ready ambush. What is there in such closeness that presses in so heavily? What manner of tree now sits, stern and unrelenting, its heart a closed book. Same tree, only different scene. More trees, in numbers unnerving, impassable, thicketed. Quickly striding now, time to get out of here, into the air. Only the end of the path, into strong light and renewed wind, brings uncommon relief.
The Botanical Gardens is nothing if not relief, strong sunshine and the promise of eternal forest. Nothing on my mind, just walking, breathing, and free, calm space in the sun.
