The Offline Mind

There was once a proud shack built high on a hill in the countryside. It was surrounded on all sides by a deep wood.

It tried it’s best to keep out the wet and wind. It provided one sunny room, kept tidy by a broom leaning in the corner. There were two sturdy beds, an old oven, and a wash basin.

A very clever girl lived there in the shack, with her mother and father, and her little brother who was still small. The four of them together were very poor, but very happy.

Each morning the girl would go out into the woods surrounding the hill to chop down old trees with her father, who would sell bundles of firewood at the market in town.

If only a small amount of wood was sold that week, the girl would help her father carry home a small fish and some potatoes. But during cooler weather, more firewood was needed by the townspeople, and they would run home from a busy day at market with armfuls of all sorts of delicious things: lamb chops, cakes, big shining apples, chestnuts, flour & sugar & eggs for mother, and milk so fresh it frothed at the top like sea foam.

One day in the woods her father was readying to fell a great oak when suddenly a limb came tumbling down on top of him. The next day, as her father rested, tended to by her mother, the girl went out alone into the woods with the axe.

She came to the great oak and shouted up “Great Oak, why did you send your heavy branch down upon my father’s arm?”

“Because I am not ready to die, little girl” said the oak.

“How then will you be reborn as fire?” asked the clever girl.

“What is fire?” asked the oak with great curiosity.

And so the little girl gathered kindling from the woods and took one small twig from the oak himself, and started a small fire there on the forest floor, careful to contain it.

When the oak felt a small part of himself transcend into fire, billowing up into the air to become a piece of cloud, he exclaimed:

“I’m dying! I’m dying!” to which the little girl responded,

“You are only changing.”

The Great Oak told the girl he would like to change, but not into fire– it was hot, and he was afraid of heights and fretted looking down at his woods from the clouds, and he did not then want to become rain only to enter the earth where it is dark, for he was also afraid of the dark.

He told the little girl that he would like to change into something else, something that stands still for a very long time, because that is what he liked to do the most.

The girl, having had a clever idea, whispered something to the Great Oak and he agreed, with all his leaves shaking like the mane of a green lion, and she set to work felling the oak. As he tumbled willingly to the ground the earth creaked and let out a great sigh and then everything was very quiet.

The girl sat by the felled oak for a long time.

That evening when she returned home she sat by her father’s bedside and told him about her conversation with the tree. He listened with great interest, and asked:

“Well, what does the Great Oak want to be?”

She leaned in and whispered something into her father’s ear.

And so, when her father was fully recovered, they set out together to the woods where the oak lay, and cut him into many pillars (for he was, after all, a very great oak). The girl planed the wood to make it smooth and sanded the oak until he looked very fine indeed.

Her father carried the handsome logs one by one all the way up the hill. The oak no longer felt afraid of heights, he felt happy as he looked down at his beloved woods.

Her father dug into the earth and stuck the great logs into the foundation of earth to be steadied and stand up tall again. The oak no longer felt afraid of the dark, for he could also see that there was light.

The family then built walls to join the oaken beams and posts together, with straw, clay and sand.

They fastened a tin roof overhead where the oak could watch the rain slip down to once again seep back into the heart of the earth, where all her secrets are kept. That is where some of my friends have gone too, thought the oak. “Say hello to my friends, rain”. And the rain would send flowers to shoot up from around the oak’s wooden posts, a greeting from below, with bluebells, daisies, and lily of the valley.

The Great Oak was now a Great House.

Having had a very profitable winter selling off all the oaken kindling and scraps, the father was able to purchase a cow, two pigs, and several chickens. The proud shack, too, had changed– now a barn, the shack enjoyed the bustle of new tenants who suited it just fine.

Yes, there was once a Great House on a hill in the countryside, and it very well may still be there (although this story took place a long, long time ago…but it was a finely constructed little house and, indeed, an excellent hill).

The Great House was two stories tall, made of clay and straw, with a strong oaken frame and a fine tin roof that tinkered when it rained, like a music box. The Great House liked being a home that kept watch of its family and above them the clouds and below them the earth and beyond them, the deep, deep woods.