The Skin of a Giant

Spend any amount of time kicking around in the woods along a floodplain and you will see giants. Cottonwoods grow big and grow fast, tend to break easy and get rotted out trunks. For those reasons and the drifts of seeds in the spring, I have largely ignored them. Until recently. While sitting next to this one today, it was the sound of its leaves clacking together in the wind that caught my attention. Sit under one and close your eyes, you will hear a symphony of water-like sounds being made by its leaves. Then place your hand on its bas relief trunk and walk around it letting your fingers fall across the voids between the vertical chunks of bark. A new appreciation came to me today.