Sharon Fendrich

by Sharon Fendrich

Like a distant voice calling from across a valley, I feel the sound of the Sapphire Oak approach me as a whisper on the breeze. Its mesmerizing blue, with its power of strength and wisdom, climbs my limbs, and envelops me in a magnetic pull of attraction. It’s time to return to the forest. 

As I near the ancient woodland the cerulean reflection upon the sky becomes ever more radiant. My walk perceives the cooling warmth that emanates towards me and hurries its step. Now yet closer, the ground has softened and my hands inhale the forest dew. 

The light is brighter now, and nearly fully encompasses the path before me. The drawing in of my heart, body and spirit, is like a bath in a natural warm spring. And then, I see it unfold within the scene before me.  

Some were brought into this world, here upon this mossy blue cushion. And here some found slumber, beneath this ancestral oak. Here, between her branches, lovers in arms danced and dreamt. And here the brave died, laid to rest in a cloak of blue beside the quiet brook. Here is where the wisdom passed from ancestor to descendant, from soldier to survivor, from dancer of stories to singer of songs.  

Her canopy is as high as the heavens, her branches as wide as the horizons. Her skin glows as the sky of the bluest ocean, her hair sparkles with an opal fire. Her roots are the pathways deeply grooved in the ground under foot, which come from everywhere that has been and lead to everywhere that will ever be.  

I have been here before, thousands of times, as have you. We have stood here together and we have stood alone. This place is the center, from where all life comes and all death rests. This is the Sapphire Oak.