“Follow the line to the left and stop at the yellow tape”, THWUMP - the stamp came down with a heavy thud upon their papers. He traveled a well worn route, a route which through the years had brought millions to the American coastline. A passage on which expectant, weary, hopeful eyes once peered out over portside rails, settling upon the stark silhouette of Manhattan. Immigrants who would go on in part to raise that silhouette to heights unimagined; to expand, reshape, inform and imprint their own image upon it. 

But that morning he wasn’t arriving by sea, gazing upon the halls of Ellis Island. Instead he looked down at the scuffed up white flooring of Newark Airport, avoiding eye contact with the stony-faced customs officer. His first unfiltered glance of America would be jostling taxis, highway overpasses and plumes of steam billowing up through fluorescent orange funnels, venting what seemed the geothermic undercurrent of industry and drive.

He came to treasure the allure of that commotion as he grew. The ceaseless, energetic buzz whose perpetual motion carved out stories of industry and triumph. Tales of commercial conquest, opulence and greatness, floating brightly on the voices he'd walk by. Billboards and flashing signs proclaiming the next great innovation. He would see clean-cut bankers gathered to catch their early morning Metro North trains, eager to put in their first trades of the day. 

And he saw himself one day walking among them, laughing as they laughed. He pictured himself lifting his family from their street level apartment, to whatever far off joyful communities they must live in. Devoid of the cracked concrete with dandelions growing between it, absent of rusted fences and old tires.

He saw his mother not having to come home late at night with exhaustion sloughing off her shoulders and set deep in her eyes. He could see his father no longer beset with lines of worry, sitting in a quiet kitchen, peacefully leafing through the paper. 

He saw that kitchen where delicious home cooked aromas and playful banter served as an invite to gather in love, rather than the hum of the microwave, failing woefully to drown out his parent’s arguments. 

He steeled himself in that vision, the ethos of that ambition. As he grew he grew in momentum and drive. Going to class, getting jobs as soon as he could, graduating and taking night classes to grind out an education.

The service had become so immense he knew nothing else. He saw his classmates laughing, a lack of care in their eyes, resentment and heaviness started to settle in. A weight that felt still to emanate from the city. A sort of oppression that seemed cast down from sweeping skyscrapers, where he saw exclusive balls and shadowy business conducted on penthouse floors. An aerial garden of eden, forever obscured from his access, only growing darker.

He sat, disillusioned and checked out, faintly taking in the drone of another late evening science class lecture. The double shift he had worked was settling in. Was this what life would be for him? Were any of those goals truly in his reach? Or would he forever be chasing paper dreams?

He drifted into a nearly dreamlike state, still somewhat conscious. He heard the voice of his teacher floating through the haze. Talking of dense forest canopies and misted seedy undergrowth. Something in his spirit longed for this mystical sounding escape. It sounded simple, unconcerned. Maybe this was what he needed, he was going to make it out to those trees, to the woods, to escape, so far away concrete would seem a foreign concept. 

He planned his escape one early October morning. The brisk air warning of impending frosts; the height of day only loosely retaining summer warmth. The train swept northbound out of the city trailing the Hudson. The buildings gradually began to yield to larger clusters of trees, a muted rainbow of orange, yellow and reds shadowed by the dark overcast weather. 

Stepping off the train and finding the trailhead he felt odd, he felt as if something was changing. As if the earth moved beneath him and the sky above. Shafts of light broke through the clouds and struck the orange carotenoids and red anthocyanin of the trees in such resonant chromatic harmony, bringing a warm ethereal glow, and casting long radiant shafts of light through the canopy onto the floor. He felt some weight lifting, some dark and dorment shadow being bathed in a way it never had. He stood awed, his mind slowed.

There was just presence, an acute awareness he had never felt before. The fall of feet on crunchy leaves. The soft rustling breeze. Free from the trailheads, away from the road, fully entombed in the forest becoming aware of the autumnal musk that hung in the air. The scent of life. Of decay, the precursors of resurrection. The fuel of spring. He felt the exhaustion set in. His spirit worn, looking to sink into the forest floor, just longing to be reborn; to be a part of this. 

He was there with the ground, there with the trees. He was rooted, entangled, subject to the world around him, in mycorrhizal connection. Stories and old fables flashed through his mind. Icarus would soar above the ocean, never seeing the reef, nor the fish who reside there, never catching the spray and feeling its cold enlivening salinity, fixed only upon his goal of clearing the horizon, of the bright and shining sun. But here he was in all of it, seeing all of it. As all of it. Belonging. 

Something flashed back into his mind from that same science class on adaptive radiation. How certain traits developed evolutionarily to suit the abundance of the environment. What had he developed in his incessant metropolitan grind? He saw thick webs of performative, quick crawling, steel ivy wrapped around him reaching in long tendrils from the city; hardening his exterior, but bringing with them strength, resilience, talent. So thick was the cover, however, that light barely made it in. But in this moment, in the serene natural stillness, the vines seemed to fall off and wither with nothing to feed off of.

He wanted to choose a new path, to seek new adaptation. Symbiotic harmony. What if he were to grow that happy kitchen. To cultivate peace in his family, and cultivate this stillness in return.

What if the dandelion growing through the cracks in the sidewalk were the sign all along? The sign that beauty was simple, to be found and cherished. That it wasn't walled off in some skyscraping garden of Eden. Held captive and out of reach. 

He vowed to lift through joy rather than force. Perhaps the more he steeled himself, the harder it became to move. And there were mountains still to move. But without the weight holding him back he felt he could move them with ease. There would be brambles to traverse, but being present in his journey, he would eat the berries. And the leaves, he would be there for every, single, leaf on his family tree.