[I've been sifting through some old boxes, the kind that were packed several moves ago and never quite got unpacked. In one I found a notebook I used to carry around and in it this little gem. This would have been... about 5 or 6 years ago.]

I came across a man today who was talking to a tree.
I felt it incumbent upon me to ask, specifically, why he was doing this.
Instead of answering what I felt was a reasonably specific question, he told me about a boy in Tibet who, when asked a question about things he knows nothing about (eg. something scientific) he can walk into a small grove of trees, ask the question aloud and then sit among the trunks and meditate. After a while (the time varies greatly so the man tells me) the boy will smile, and bow to the trees as he leaves the small grove. He will then give shockingly accurate answers to the questions. He wont use any terminology he didn't know beforehand, but he will attempt to explain (and succeed) in his own words, the answer.

I asked the man about bowing to the trees. Does the boy believe that they are where the answers come from? Would it not be more reasonable to assume the boy has some clairvoyant abilities? I was told that yes, the boy attributes the answers he receives to the trees, and why should we doubt them? My response to this was that trees don't talk. At least not in any way we can understand...much like any plant. It has been documented that under certain circumstances (an approaching fire) plants can and will transmit signals into their root structures and thus the ground around them, but people don't have roots to 'hear' them.

He seemed displeased by this, so I tried a different tack.
Assuming the boy can communicate with trees, how, I asked, do the trees in a small grove in Tibet know the answers to specific questions about varied subjects they will never come in contact with? At this the man chuckled and pulled out and unfolded a piece of paper, on which he had assembled a collection of warning label tags from actual appliances. Among them were: On a mattress: Do not swallow; on a chainsaw: Do not attempt to stop chain with hands or genitals; and on a water heater: If building containing heater is on fire, do not enter building. There were of course many more along side those pearls.

How do the trees know the answers to any given question? he repeated. He looked at me for a long moment before inquiring '.....How do people?'. And then the man said good bye to the tree (but not me) and ran (yes ran) away.

I am filled with glee that people like this exist. He may have been completely crazy, or maybe some flavor of retarded. He may have been acting like a loon to a complete stranger only to run away and have himself a chuckle (I know this happens because I do it). He may have seriously believed that trees are a sentient psychic race and should perhaps supplant humans as the dominant form of life. He may have been a dangerous escapee from an institution where they keep dangerous pre-escapees.

Either way, I feel my world is enriched to have bathed in the glow of his ... whatever it was.

[And you people think >I'm< strange...]