Driving up U.S. Route 6 through the all but unpopulated area of Northern Nevada, The Great Basin, we saw a National Forest that had no trees. "Entering Toiyabe National Forest" -- "Leaving Toiyabe National Forest." Nary a tree to be seen from the highway. Then some of the longest, straightest stretches of road ever. Few or no cars. In places, drive for an hour seeing no one.

Climbing higher, the far mountains beginning to narrow in, a tree alone. Only one. Ravens had built a nest in it, though it was only eight or ten feet tall. 

So much to see out here on the road, but this one thing I had to stop to really take a look and a photograph. I asked myself, why?

The human condition often times can feel like the tree looks: alone in a vast emptiness. Lonely. In need of companionship. Tree compassion, anthropomorphization.

Then we begin the process of seeking a sense of God, and if we're lucky, we find a technique like our meditation that drops us off into an experience of The Big Empty. Clouds scudding by overhead, the purity of empty space and the adventure of being so small in such vastness, and feeling absolutely as if we belong. We have not gone some place foreign; rather we finally have been able to drop in to what is most perfectly our own. Tree identity.

And as we move forward with this practice, we begin to identify equally with the vast emptiness as with the individuality and we begin to be able to experience the truth that, in an infinite field, every point is the center. In this infinity/God/universe/unified field, I am the center point. You are the center point. Tree is the center point. To find God we need look no further than here. I imagine tree has known this always. Me, it's taken a while.

Today I will ask for a secret message from the universe, and I will expect no less than an answer.