Bits -- TREE

I'm going to post random bits from now on. Because I've nowhere else to put them, really, and because, well, why not.

I'll start with "tree."This is from an AVE train ride from Madrid to Figueres. AVE is high speed rail. We were going about 300KM/h at the time.

TREE

There stand kilometers of mental distance between a hill covered in trees, even shrubs, and a hill with no more than grass and a single tree, growing at an angle, from somewhere close to the bottom. That second tree on that second hill puts all the other hills into sudden perspective; it makes the distance up any of those hills a day’s work. Suddenly, even from afar, a hill, with a single tree growing at an angle from a third of the way up is the perfect place (among an entire landscape of hills, farmland, and mountainous outcroppings)--the only place--for a picnic. If you could get there.

You’re not even the picnic type. The idea is recognizable as a romantic one from stories and films, but the reality has always come out rather damp-bottomed and bug-ridden, with soggy food and far more stress and drama than any lunch deserves. What presents itself in a pretty little package of romantic realization soon becomes the realization that romance is quite often very much a picnic.

What to do, then, with the beauty of that tree, standing watch over nothing? Is it enough to note, and pass, and think wistfully of opportunities wasted?