It’s a fine, pre-spring morning. Breezy. It feels good. The air is cool, but the sun is powerful enough to warm the skin, so there’s this blend of freshness and heat that feels like permission to breathe a little deeper. The kind of morning that makes you aware of breath itself. Cool as it enters. Warm as it leaves.

I’m looking at our pecan tree, its six main branches splaying like ribs, with sub-branches feathering out. It’s completely devoid of leaves, and I can watch the whole structure sway in the wind. The smaller branches act like wind catchers, and I notice the pattern. The same design repeating itself. A bigger branch breaks into smaller ones, and those split again, and so on, right down to the finest twigs that stitch the air.