The Old Man Who Tends the Cloud Trees...

There is a place in the world that few persons know; it is a place high on a mountain that no one climbs, deep in a wood no one travels. It is not on any map; as Melville says, true places never are.

High on this mountain, deep in this wood, there is a small house. An old man lives there, has always lived there. As long as there has been this wood on this mountain, there has been an old man living amongst the mist and trees.

He lives a simple life deep in the wood, high on the mountain, tending the trees that grow up around his small house.

Every morning, he rises with the sun and goes to the well. He sits on the edge of the well and drops all his hopes and wishes and dreams into the water, pieces of his soul, falling like pebbles from his mouth to splash down at the bottom. He then draws bucket after bucket of water from the well and pours out his wishes and hopes and dreams at the foot of each of the trees that grows around the clearing where his house sits.

When the sun climbs high into the sky, in the clear mountain air, and the mist dissolves, and the thirst of the trees has been quenched, the old man goes to the shed next to the well and takes out an odd looking knife. The handle of the knife is white as bone, smooth and shiny, and moulded to fit his hand. The blade is long and thin and bent at an odd angle. One side has serrated teeth, the other a straight, sharp edge.

While the sun finishes its arcing journey across the noonday sky into the evening, he takes his odd knife and he trims the trees, pruning away leaves and branches, smoothing them, shaping them. While he cuts at a tree, he whispers to it, telling it all the dreams he has for it, all the hopes, and he pours out his heart to each tree as he grooms it, filling it up with love as he pares away the parts of the tree that are not suited for its purpose.

When the sun sets, the old man’s work is finished, and he retires for the day. The mist returns as the sky darkens and the leaves of the trees shimmer and shift in the fey light of the gloaming. As the moon rises above them in the dark of the night, the trees inhale as one, and exhale as one, and they release into the sky great puffy clouds. Once the clouds gather above the deep wood, high on the mountain, the west wind comes and carries them away.