When I was in my mid 20s I was attending some classes in a city a bus ride away from my home town in New England. Three times a week I would spend an hour on that bus, and all along the road were trees. I had grown up with trees all around, but had not really paid attention to them - they were just there.  But for some reason, the trees I passed every day began to come alive to my eyes and in my heart. I watched them change through the seasons, from summer to autumn through to winter and then into spring. They took my breath away with their vitality, their individuality, their slow, so very slow vitality. I remember thinking, 'They are not afraid to be flawed, imperfect.' They were each so beautiful even when bits were broken and they were 'unsymmetrical.'

My love of trees never left me. For many years I lived in Africa and spent much time in the bush, and became aware of birds and their relationship with trees. The incredible magic of their dance with their trees! Now I have lived in London for a very long time and when I am teaching in another town, another country, another continent, I always look for a tree in the first coffee break, so that I can go to it and rest against it at some point during the time I am there. They are my guardian angels. There is a rather small tree in the road outside my flat today in London. It is not very glamorous, but I have fallen in love with it and I spent at least a half hour every day watching it dance with the wind, and I watch the birds that come and go in it. It is my form of contemplation or meditation or attending. Trees are one of the great gifts of being here, in the density of time and space. 

— Darby Costello