Picture a forest, she says, and I do.

Golden trees rise all around me, and showers of leaves, like rain, are delicately floating through the air. I am running along a narrow path through the heart of the wood. Wind swirls around me, and a cyclone of leaves dances crazily through the trees. To my ears there is the laughter of children. This wood is so very old, full of time, full of love. It is ready to share a golden harvest. The sun sparkles in with its amber light.

I blink once, and before me I suddenly see a break in the trees. A circle, like a throne room, and the leave strewn path, as well as my ever running feet, are leading me straight for it. In the center of the clearing rises a ring of stones and on top of that, another ring of masoned rocks. It forms a rather conical pyramid with the blue sky for a crown. My running legs send me almost flying up its steps, right to the pinnacle at the top. In the very center stands a slender tree, and though his thinness makes him look young, along with his green leaves, I know that he is older than all the trees that stand around him. He is wise.

I reach out to touch his trunk, and I feel his powerful eminence come over me. I see worlds breaking and forming anew. From the tangled mass of roots below comes a feeling. The branches, loftily reaching into the blue jewel of a sky, join in with a humming knowledge, and together in the trunk the two forces join, earth and sky, and a word is formed.

Grow.

Suddenly I really am flying. I am soaring backwards, over the leave strewn path, watching the God of Trees getting smaller and smaller as his forest sails by me in a rush of wind. Then the woods give way to prairie, and I watch as it grows smaller and smaller until it is nothing more than a deep green spot on the horizon.

I stand in the center of this huge grassy plain. The wind whips and waves of tall grass bend and sway like the sea. The stars slowly come out, winking me from their purple canopy.

I shoot down my roots. Out of the bottoms of my bare feet they sink deep into the earth. I feel the energy and love from the ground spread up into my legs and core. Up, I lift my arms to the sky. My branches shoot out, and flowery leaves explode in a green wonder.

And now I am a huge tree, swaying expansively in the prairie wind. I feel time. A thousand days and nights pass by and still my bark stays strong. There is a new feeling. I look out and find that a new forest is growing all around me. Tiny green saplings are rising from the earth, sharing the soil with my roots, and the sky with my branches. They stretch up and up. In just one blink of my yellow tree eyes they are huge, and a friendly new forest has sprung. New trees of all kinds stretch ambitiously high, and the moist viney smell of youth fills the air.

All my children.

I feel a mother�s love for the wood all around me, and with a great stretch, like a yawn, I break out of the mother tree that I am, and find that I am human again. I step down from my small pedestal in the forest and take in the beauty all around me. I am struck with how gorgeous and full of life it all is, and I created it.

But suddenly, there is a duality in my consciousness. I realize that the woman I am watching, almost floating in wonder through the glade in her flowing white gown and long waterfall brown hair is not me at all. I watch her from afar. She is smiling at all of the trees, her children; shinning with morning dew; and letting the sunlight sifting through the trees sparkle in her green eyes.

I know who she is, and when she looks at me I feel the power of the forest. I know the joy and pain of thousands of forests breaking through the earth and slowly falling through the ages into death. I see the stars again, and they form a web of intricate dots, all connected, all flowing. They are all children in this woman�s eyes. We are all connected.

I walk forward to her and don�t know what to do or say, she simply takes me in her arms and hugs me. It feels like home. I feel the bark of trees on her skin, the morning fog in her breath, and her hands, so like flowers, are gently holding me.

When I pull away, feeling a tug to go, I look into her wise face and wish for something to say. She smiles, and like an explosion of long white wings in flight, she says just one word.

Grow.