One-Sentence Story: Fog
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| Redwood Tree Circle by Brad Gibson |
I prefer to live this way—really I do—unmoving, in this holy, self-contained circle, and always in a fog, for it is the fog, the blessed thick, white mist, that nourishes me and protects me and embraces me and obscures my sight—yes, my sight—for why, when I never can forget my own mortality for even a moment—the very body of my mother—horizontal now in her death—lies here before me, where it gradually crumbles, rots, decays, and decomposes into oblivion—would I want to know the number of the days since my birth only to learn the limits of my time here on this earth, so you people, you little, little people blowing through my valley faster than the winds of a winter storm, how can you ask, ask, always ask the very same question, “What would it be like to be a redwood tree and to live a thousand years?” exactly the way you down there now are asking me, you little, little, little one—such a strange seedling you are, with your bark the pink of a dawn sky and your leaves the rich brown of moist mineral soil—as you pause like a humming bird to stare up at my great height, and do not wait, never wait long enough for the answer.
by Nina Zolotow
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