Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald. All that's happening on this green jewel in space. I wish I could show you these cedar trees.

On top of a high mesa in Rio Aruba County, New Mexico,

south of Chama, north of Abacue, up there in the wind and sun and rain.

Up there amidst the raw forces of nature, the harsh, high, desert light. I wish I could show you these cedar trees.

They're old grandmothers and grandfathers, a few hundred years old, some of them at least.

Trunks, twice as wide as me, roots winding tortuously towards fleeting water.

Here, one was lopped off completely at the trunk and had to regrow all over again.

Here, this one, the trunk was split when it was only a sapling and it divided in two. Here, this one all but died in a drought, but managed to send a new shoot up and then that new shoot became its own tree.

They're gnarled and twisted these trees, their body's living maps.

Maps of what?

Of all the readjustments they've had to make?

The winding paths they had to take.

Of all the places they responded to impacts or were deprived

of essential nourishment and still found a way to grow despite the odds. Some grew on exposed rock

and reached and reached their way towards better soil. Some were perched on precarious edges. The wind bent them almost back to the ground,

and still they found a way to reorient towards the sunlight. Amidst all, they find their way

towards vertical. Some had to draw completely inward during cold winters, saving every bit of sap and water.

Some dried out in summer.

...