THE DRAWING OF THE TREE. I enjoyed myself more and felt more in touch with the tree when I drew what I thought of as the energy patterns of the tree. The sap flow lines from the ground up through the branches made my own creative sap flow, getting in touch with the organic form of the tree. This led me to draw the root system as well, though I could only imagine it.

WRITING VS. DRAWING. Looking back at what I just wrote, I notice that when I write rather than draw the focus shifts from the tree to me and my experience of drawing the tree. The tree itself is forced into a minor role. Drawing keeps me focused on the tree itself, helping me concentrate on something outside myself, "seeing the object as in itself it really is."

MOTION, WORDS, AND MULTIMEDIA. What are words best used for? Certainly not to capture an object at rest: drawing does that better. Words work better for an object in motion. The tree is unlike me in being fixed in one place. Drawing captures that fixity of position. The tree is like me in those parts in which it moves. I want to use the words to capture the motion of the needles and ends of the branches as they sway in the breeze. Even better than mere words would be multimedia. Video? Animation? How would those mediums affect the message? Animation would obviously involve my creativity, as in Gifbuilder, but with a video camera I would be more passive. Some creativity is still involved but with a video camera I would run the same risks as the still camera: snapping my shots and moving on with little thought and little concentration on the tree? Of course I take my time with cameras as well, and the editing of the videotape and the still images would also call on my creativity.

WORDS AND AWARENESS. Perhaps words work best for consciousness or awareness, to speak the being of the tree. If it could speak what would it say?

"I am solid, heavy, weighing thousands of pounds. It would take hundreds of students gathered together to equal my weight. I am over fifty feet high, as high as the Littlefield House, higher than the church next door. I am home to squirrels, tree frogs, cicadas, and birds, whose fallen feathers are beneath my branches. My color is green, the color of the chlorophyll which is the essence of my life, and dark brown, the color of my trunk, branches, roots, and the soil in which I was planted, from which I draw the minerals and nutrients of my life. I reach up and grow toward the sun. I grow to use all the space and light and moisture available to me, pushing buds through my bark, opening the buds into tiny little branches, pushing out the branches farther and farther into the air, helping them generate needles and more buds and more branches until I hit the ground or a building or reach my topmost limit. I worship the sun, the primary source of my life. I am grateful for it and the rain which puts moisture in the soil to feed my roots. I am thankful for the wind which carries pollen to my tiny flowers that will turn them into cones which will drop onto the ground and become my babies.

"I have been here since before you were born. I have felt the tremors of thousands of students and teachers as they passed by on these sidewalks. I have felt the tremors, however faintly, of the children playing nearby in the University Methodist Day Care Center. I have nestled up to the southwest corner of the Littlefield House for decade after decade. I have sensed the presence of many different people behind the glass of these windows."

"At regular intervals throughout the day and night I feel the tremors of sound generated by the big bell on top of the tower. At night, like you, I shut down my systems and wait for day, though I am aware of small artificial lights in the Littlefield House, the street lamp near my branches, and many other lights nearby as well as the restless movements of students who do not shut down as early as I do for the night. Some even seem to be more creatures of the night than the day. Once a year the big crane comes and dresses me up with hundreds of Christmas lights. I become noticed and admired by hundreds of people."