One morning I sat on a big gear raft next to Linda Brown, the older vet who had been institutionalized for depression. She sat with her arms wrapped around her life jacket, her sandaled feet propped on the front tube of the boat. “The trees can’t control their lives,” she’d said, speaking so softly she practically whispered. “We can’t always control what happens to us. The trees can teach us acceptance. And metamorphosis.”
