The Rough Skin of Time

The smell of damp earth after a long rain always brings me back to the garden of my childhood. It is a heavy, metallic scent, like wet iron mixed with the sweetness of decaying leaves. If I press my palm against the bark of an ancient tree, I can feel the history of the wood—the deep, jagged ridges that have hardened over decades, resisting the soft touch of my fingertips. It feels like braille written by the wind and the sun. We spend so much of our lives rushing, our skin barely grazing the surfaces of the world, yet the body remembers the slow, steady pulse of things that stay put. There is a profound comfort in knowing that some things are allowed to grow old, to crack, and to settle into the soil without apology. When was the last time you stood still long enough to let the texture of a place seep into your own skin?

Siew Bee Lim has captured this quiet endurance in an image titled An Old Tree. It invites us to sit among the roots and feel the weight of the years. Does the stillness of this scene reach out and touch you as it did me?