a different perspective

Sometimes you see something, while not unusual in itself, touches you in a surprising and unexpected way. I was driving home from town this morning. We are having a heat wave in the middle of winter so the quality of the light was hazy and hot. If I was plonked down in my air conditioned car at midday and not told what season of the year I would've guessed summer even though the sun is still too far north. The light bleached colour from the paddocks, from the sky, from the bitumen streaming to infinity from the front of the car. There was a flash of white to the west. I looked and it was gone. Then it came again. I watched and saw a column of birds spiraling up a thermal. White then blue, white then blue. When the sun wasn't reflecting off their whiter than white wings, they were invisible.
For a moment I was with them, silent and still, riding a current of air with the vastness of the earth diminishing beneath me. The vision didn't last long. I was driving after all.
I have often played the shifting of perspective game. There'll be a blowfly touring the rooms like a fat house detective, on the hunt for contraband food. In those idle moments I'll pretend I'm seeing what the blowfly sees as he buzzes from one square bordered space to another. Or one of our cats, or an ant or even trying to sense the consciousness of the poinciana tree outside this window.
There's something about trees, that slow steady life, their experience of time. Humans must look like film on fast forward to them, scuttling about in seconds before the vastness of their existence. Of course, one could argue that trees aren't conscious. They're alive but dumb, having about as much consciousness as a fence post. I can't explain why I feel differently but I do. It's a feeling. Like trying to define love. We know love exists but we can't prove its existence in a lab. It's a feeling. With the same faulty reasoning I know that trees are so much more than mere trees. Trees know the answers to the big philosophical questions. It's there in their shape, their bark, the movement of their leaves, the roots hidden beneath the ground. Trees are deep.