A Wish

I once knew a bush, a wee little shrub on the rise of a hill on the edge of Buffalo Plateau.  This wasn’t an especially beautiful shrub, just a plain little bush that enjoyed watching the world around him.

One day early in the summertime, a little caterpillar crawled along the ground, inching its way from one little plant to the next little sapling.  As he watched it, the shrub felt a desire well up inside, as the inchworm crawled along slowly from one place to the next.  As he did, a barely audible voice was heard “Oh, I do wish…”, and the willows beside the brook heard the voice. 

“Who said that?” they asked aloud amongst themselves. 

The little bush was embarrassed for saying anything, especially a silly wish about something that would never, ever happen. 

“Someone said something, we just know somebody said something.” said the cottonwoods a little higher up. 
But the shrub stayed quiet, watching the inchworm climb to a new leaf and begin its hard-earned feast.

A few weeks later, the bush was watching the stream wind by and the squirrels jump from branch to branch in the trees.  Soon a little deer just losing its fawn spots saw the little shrub and sidled up next to him.  As the deer began nibbling at the little shrub, the shrub began to worry.  Not so much because he was worried about being eaten up, but that he might make another noise to disturb the trees around him, because the nibbling was beginning to tickle. 

Soon the deer was joined by his mother, and the little shrub couldn’t take it any longer.  He let out a little giggle.  The deer paid no never-mind to this, as they had heard many little bushes and trees giggle as they nibbled at their leaves. 

The deer kept eating, and the bush couldn’t hold it in any longer.  He laughed, the little shrub just out and laughed and the deer hadn’t heard any such thing from a little shrub before.  As the deer bounded away down the valley, so swift and free and full of purpose, the little shrub didn’t even try to stifle it.  “I wish I could...” 

The willows knew who it had been this time.  “You wish you could what?!”

The little shrub was terrible embarrassed now, and didn’t know what to say.  He just wanted so much to jump and bound down the hill like those deer.  It didn’t help to wish, it was just so much fun to watch, and he just couldn’t help it.

The cottonwoods didn’t like this sort of behavior from a lowly bush.  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t help to even think about it, you’re only a little bush.” 

The aspens didn’t appreciate the shrub either.  “Humph.  Nothing but a little bush.”

But the pine didn’t even think that highly. “Looks like a weed to me.”

Soon the air started getting cooler, and the line of white started marching down from the tops of the mountains toward the little valley at the edge of the Buffalo Plateau.

The elk began their restless season, and the deer moved up and down the mountain more often and more nervously. 

As the little shrub felt the cold come on, he lost his green leaves and started to feel dry and somehow, lighter.  He watched the sky more as the clouds came lower and the wind came down from the plateau in long, cold sighs. 

One day, as he shivered in the cold breeze, he saw an eagle rise in a gust.  As the great bird rose, the little shrub felt something rise in him and this time he didn’t even try to stifle it. 

“I with I could fly above everything, to be free like that eagle!”

The willows, cottonwoods and aspens didn’t know what to say at this outburst from the little bush.  The pine knew what to say, though.  “Only a weed.  Looks like a weed to me.”

As the Pine said his words, the little shrub felt something move.  His roots weren’t holding him fast to the hill, and he was moving.  Inch by inch. 

As he felt his roots give way, he wasn’t scared.  He remembered the little caterpillar as he inched along and he was happy.

“Just a weed,” said the cottonwoods.

Just then, the little bush was free.  The same breeze that had been chill in his branches carried him down the hill, bouncing and rolling.  His happiness increased as he remembered the deer and their way of hurrying down the valley. 

“Naught but a tumbleweed,” grumbled the little bushes’ former neighbors, the willows. 

And at that, the little tumbleweed was caught by the great cold gust that had carried the eagle into the sky. As he swung high, he saw the trees as he hadn’t seen them before, as only trees, but beautiful in their own way, and that the little brook in the wee valley mirrored the sky that he had for such a time longed to join. 

And the wind blew him onward.

Special thanks to Ray "White Bear" Mendenhall