Death is transformation and it occurs constantly. Every moment that has passed is death. Each moment gives us the opportunity to live in the present. The past does not exist. The future has yet to come. I am dying all the time. I am adapting to every change in life. I die every day because I am not attached to what happened a moment ago, I let it go, and this makes me free. When we surrender to death, we live only in the moment.
As strange as it may sound, it was in the fall and winter that I felt closest to my tree. Her spring beauty and summer fruit filled me with delight, but when the days began to grow cool and the leaves turned from darkest green to yellow, I could feel something deep and marvelously intimate begin to take place between us. And as fall turned to winter, this feeling of intimacy grew. With no bees humming among the blossoms, no birds fluttering from limb to limb, no leaves and cherries decorating her branches, my tree seemed to reveal herself to me in her purest form -- in her very essence. And when I embraced her and pressed my ear against her trunk, I could hear the silence that united us. And I knew that was sacred. (Choqosh Auh-Ho-Ho)