It has been raining for two days here on the mountain – lightning, thunder, wild wetness and stranger shades of green that come through with the grey clouded light. I was standing in my kitchen this evening, looked up and suddenly saw the trees at the bottom of the meadow outside my house moving in the strange light and had a clear sensation of each of them as specific talking, very aware, very conscious beings – just as unique and conscious in their way as we know ourselves to be as humans. I felt it like a blast, a sudden and clear revelation that I had never seen before. I kept looking at them and the sensation remained. Now it is dark, but I hope to develop this sensibility and never forget it, to remember and strengthen it. I feel its truth at a cellular level. As Thomas Berry says, we humans have become autistic in our separation from the consciousness of and communication with nature. Something broke through my autism very powerfully for those few moments today and I never want to go back.