Why we climb

A thousand hushed voices whispered through the trees, as the wind idly tossed their leaves around, creating a myriad of shadowed shapes in the tranquil gully. The ground was covered with soft, luscious grass, which danced in and out of the shadows. The light from the autumn suns had become long and slipped between the trees like liquid.
As she held her hand out in front of her, she couldn’t help but wonder at the silent beauty of it all. A river flowed through the gully and its gentle trickling sound soothed her ears. As she gazed at the canopy above she longed to be in an endless forest, where she could run free, exploring each tree in her own time, becoming intimate with them all.
It had been a day and a half since the council cast her out. Never before had anyone dared express such outlandish desires...trees were for shelter and wood to build, to take pleasure in climbing them seemed alien to them. She lay there and wondered what was so terribly wrong with what she had done? To her it seemed the most natural of things to climb and explore the trees, the canopy was the place she felt most at home, the only place she felt truly safe. How many times had she crept out at night to climb and watch the stars? When she was perched hundreds of feet up in the canopy, she felt somehow closer to them. She felt closer to everything, it was as if nature was welcoming her with open arms and embracing her with all the passion, beauty and mystery of a new romance. She never felt as alive as when she was jumping from branch to branch 500 feet up in the trees of the Great forest. How could that be wrong? All she wanted to do was make them appreciate nature the same way she did.
To her left there was a beech, magnificent in its size and stature, the uppermost tips of its leaves being over 600 feet above her head. Each one glistening with a fire-red intensity resembling living flame, as the branches swayed gently in the ever-present breeze. The pale blue-grey bark lit up like the pre dawn sky as the last fading rays of the suns shone upon it. This was her tree. She had named it. A secret name, a name that needed no words to be expressed, a silent name that screamed in her head every time she was close to it. This had been tree with which she had fallen in love, it drove her and challenged her, never making the climb too easy, or so difficult that she was overwhelmed. The tree was her as she was it. Any other description of their relationship fell short.
The suns were beginning to set and so she decided to once again climb her tree, to reach the top and sit, gazing in awe at the world beneath her, as well as the stars above. She was at the cross roads between worlds, on the very boarders of heaven and yet grounded in the world. And at that precise moment when she reached the top and the suns were being chased into darkness by the night, she felt as though she were the only person in the whole of creation. Not a single thing could make her move from that spot. She felt a connection to a knowledge as old as time. She sensed all things in the world and knew why. Her consciousness became the air around her; she touched everything on the planet and reached out to the stars themselves. Nothing could ever be more right for her, time stopped and her sense of self slipped away completely, she became one with the universe, she saw infinite worlds and possibilities, she witnessed the end of time, just as she had been there to see it begin. All was peaceful and still. Yet she knew this moment would fade and she wept because she didn't want it to, she found it hard to be trapped inside her own body, the connection, the oneness she had felt was gone and she was left alone atop her tree to replay the experience, except she couldn’t. Her mind wasn’t able to process her thoughts and experiences; instead she was left with the feeling of being profoundly changed in a way she couldn’t explain. She knew her journey had only just begun.