Bark, you see, it carries its years with a quiet kind of grace, like the way a person might wear their weariness, but not let it break them. Each crack, each rough patch, it’s all there for anyone who takes the time to notice. Time doesn’t move for the tree the way it moves for me, but it’s there, deep in the grooves, as real as the earth beneath my feet. It holds on to everything— the good seasons, the harsh winters, the moments no one else would care to remember.
There’s something about the way bark lives through it all, taking on the weather, the storms, and just keeps growing. But it doesn’t grow in some grand display of defiance. It’s quiet. Almost too quiet, but it’s there. Steady. It stands, rooted in the soil, reaching up like it’s always known where it was meant to go. And in those cracks, in that rough skin, there’s the story of everything that’s ever tried to break it—and failed.
What is it to bear witness to time like that? To hold everything that’s passed me by, not in my mind but in my very being? I, too, carry my years on my skin. The lines on my face, the tension in my hands, I carry the marks of my living just as the tree carries hers. But where I rush, where I try to forget, the tree doesn’t. The bark remembers. And it reminds me, if I listen, that time isn’t something to escape, but something to live with, to grow through.
There’s a kind of reverence in that, a kind of strength I don’t always recognize. To stand and take everything life throws at me, and to keep growing—not because I want to prove something, but because it’s simply what I do. The tree doesn’t apologize for its scars. It wears them as proof that it was here, that it stood in the face of everything, and it survived. And maybe, just maybe, that’s something I could learn from. The way bark keeps its stories. The way it holds its time.
Exquisitely written, I love how much thought you've put into this ❤️