黑暗亦無阻你繼續成長
有沒有一段日子，你覺得自己是背光站著的？前面的人都站在亮處，你這一邊甚麼都看不清，只知道自己好像沒有在動，好像活在一片黑暗中。
喜瑪拉雅雪松就長在這樣的地方。它生在西喜瑪拉雅的山谷，紮根在太陽照不到的那一面山坡。那一面的光比對面少，長得也比對面慢。
但它沒有因為光少而枯萎，而是繼續成長，年輪仍然一圈一圈地長出來。光較少的年份，年輪就長得窄一點。印度德拉敦林業研究所有一片喜瑪拉雅雪松的橫切面，兩米八闊，數得出七百零四圈。當中有寬的，也有窄到要湊近才分得開的。
它的氣味是乾的木香，溫暖，帶一點香脂感。開頭有一絲生澀的柑橘香，之後才慢慢化開，成為溫厚的木香。
那些窄的年輪，記下的不是失敗，而是慢下來成長的印記。撐住整棵樹的，從來不只是寬的那幾圈。慢，和停下來，是兩件事。
你以為黑暗的那段日子，其實也一直無阻你慢慢成長。
以香為語，安在當下。
𝘽𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩, 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩.
The dark does not stop you growing.
Have you known a season when you felt you were standing with your back to the light? Everyone ahead of you in the brightness, nothing on your side quite clear, only the sense that you had stopped moving, as though you were living inside the dark.
Himalayan cedar grows in just such a place. It lives in the valleys of the western Himalaya, rooted on the face of the slope the sun does not reach. Less light than the far side of the valley, and slower growth for it.
Yet it does not wither for want of light. It goes on growing, and the growth rings come one after another. In the leaner years the ring is simply narrower. The Forest Research Institute at Dehradun holds a cross-section of this cedar, two metres eighty across, bearing seven hundred and four growth rings. Some are broad. Some so fine you must lean close to tell one from the next.
Its scent is dry wood, warm, faintly balsamic. A green, slightly unripe citrus note at the opening, which only later softens into a deep and rounded woodiness.
Those narrow rings record no failure. They are the mark of a season that grew slowly. What holds a tree upright was never only the broad years. Slow and stopped are not the same thing.
The dark season you thought you had lost never once stopped you growing.
Grounded in the present, spoken through scent.
𝘽𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩, 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩.