[Perry] The Sky is Falling

*An excerpt from an email*

Dear Tami,

You know how sometimes, you see things that spur thoughts in your head? Or you see something that your mind suddenly interprets in a different way and you can’t stop SEEING it that way?

I had one of those moments this morning.

When I pulled into my parking spot at work, I looked up to the familiar trees as I walked and froze as I suddenly saw something else.

From my angle, the moon looked, almost like a bowl. It was slanted, for sure, but it was enough on its side that the bowl impression was hard to shake. And there were these trees, right? Trees bare of leaves with winter dry branches, reaching up to the sky?

And just where I was walking in from, the angle I looked up…

It looked like the tree was cradling the moon, holding it up in the sky.

I took a step or two to one side, then the other, and I found that there were enough conveniently located branches that I could always squint and make it look like the tree was holding up the moon.

It’s the trees, Tami, that hold up the sky.

All of our vaunted knowledge? Our precious science? All wrong. All disproven by the simple idea that what we see……and HOW we see it, is how it really is.

Trees reach up with their branches to hold up the sky, the stars, the moon…the firmament, you know? Have you ever run into that word before? I ran into it the first time while reading the Death Gate cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickmann (the Dragonlance authors) and I’ve never forgotten it since.

The trees hold up the sky, Tami. And we don’t know that. We’re so set in our ways that we believe ourselves to be right. We believe that there’s a troposhere, stratosphere, and ionosphere before the cold vacuum of space.

We’ll find out the immensity of the error of our ways when we chop down the very last tree on earth in the name of progress…and on that day? The sky will FALL to the ground, and doom us all.

And the Heavens will speak of the hubris of Man, who believed he could tame the sky.

Related posts:

The Trees Are Spilling Joy
[Perry] Wherein Perry Goes Rock Climbing
[Perry] Christmas