That was the gibberish—abstract and useless?—steel pinballs bouncing off skull walls, as my feet moved me through the woods. I passed the stand of white birch. They like the cold, so the higher it is, the more likely they’ll grow. They can be tapped, like maples, their sap about a third as sweet. It can even be fermented. Birch, ash, and oak are the sacred trees of the Druids, Celts, and the Norse. My feet knew where I was going.

There’s a great oak that lives above me.

These lands were clear-cut back in the nineteenth century. It’s rare to find a tree much older than one hundred or so. Somehow, for some reason, the landowner or the lumberjacks left this one. It’s lived to grow bigger than anything around it. I would guess, without much science to substantiate it, that it’s perhaps 250 years old.

I knelt there. In the dirt. Against the roots. I reached out to put my hands on its bark, rougher and harder than a boxer’s knuckles. I wanted to connect through it to life, to the sacred, if there is such a thing, to the each in all, to the all in each. I opened my senses and myself to all the things moving around me.

I knew who I wanted to speak to. I called out to my wife. I called out to my son. I knew that in order to speak to them I would have to hallucinate their deaths away. Summon their avatars in the way that some say they summon saints. “Help me. Talk to me,” I said. “You’re only body dead. My soul is deader than either one of yours.”

My wife said, “Je connais la tristesse, la douleur…the pain, the sadness, of losing life. When death came to eat me away, knowing that I was leaving those I love and would no longer be able to give the gifts I wish to give…”

My son said, “I wanted to save lives, heal bodies, prolong lives. I wanted to be a hero…a hero to life…”

I so wanted it to be true that they somehow still lived and were talking to me.

Ravens and crows cawed to announce that another voice would speak, my voices should be silent, and I should attend.

The weather came over the ridge and the wind began to blow. It grabbed at the weariest leaves, pulling them off their branches. An owl flew out of the oak. It cruised in a circle, wings spread wide, then swooped fast and low, caught something in its talons and disappeared.