This tree at Arlington Nantional Cemetery has been witness to countless military burials, as our brave men and women in uniform’s caskets, draped in the American flag, are lowered into the earth in this extraordinary location. It has been privy to personal grief, public ceremony, scorching heat and snowfall powdering the hallowed ground.
Although most of the cemetery consists of far-reaching sections with nothing but perrfectly straight, evenly spaced lines of grave markers, in some areas there are trees rising towards the heavens amongst the rows of white. It is life affirming, this ancient sentry with its weathered trunk.
You cannot stand in in the midst of Arlington NatioalCemetey without contemplating the passage of time as well as your own mortaility. This tree felt somber and serious to me, yet hopeful too. Still sporting a considerable amount of leaves in mid-December, it almost dared me to not acknowledge it, to recognize it as something special.
On these grounds of seemingly infinite final resting places, there is beauty in every life lived. And in this tree.
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