The trillium, the thimble berry canes, and the maple seedlings are all the same height right now– a green fringe a foot or so above the forest floor.
The trillium won’t get any taller. Their flowers won’t last forever, and as everything else shoots up you won’t even notice them with their shiny trio of leaves on a slightly woody stalk.
The thimble berries practically grow like bamboo– shooting up fast, reaching as high as my chest before summer’s halfway through.
And those tiny maples– I wonder which ones will stick with it. Which ones will be in just the right spot and someday be the high leafy canopy far above day hikers like me.
It makes me think about the difference between fluttering seeds, regenerative roots you couldn’t clear out if you tried, and flowers that hide under leaves rather than sway up top. And it makes me want to know what I’m the same height as, metaphorically speaking: what else is here, now, both slower and faster than me? What lines up just like the trillium, thimble berry, and maple– only now, and never again?
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