Tika & Roots

Tika and I were out in the sunshine last summer when we spotted this Ponderosa Pine tree. It was growing on a fairly steep sandy bank and only those tangled, deeply embedded roots, kept the tree from falling down the hill.

Tika and I had a nice discussion about roots and not the Ponderosa kind. Our roots are our forebears, our ancestors, those who have gone before us in time. The sometimes tangled lives they led have become the foundation which holds us up straight and tall in the sunshine of today. The deeper into the earth the roots reach, the stronger the tree.

The strength of our personal roots are the stories of our ancestors. Just to know the vital statistics of their lives is not very interesting. But to learn how they learned to overcome the big rocks, the lack of water, and the ever present danger of falling down the hill, as with a Ponderosa, will make us strong too.

Tika listened for a while and then dozed off in the sunshine. She only knows that she is from Idaho; her doxie roots are shallow.