the terrifying thing about breaking up with someone is that suddenly your whole palette of emotional responses and reactions is wrong. everything has changed, yet that change hasn't seeped into the soil.
in the quetico, portions of the wilderness have had fires go through five, ten, fifteen years ago. the newly fired land looks burnt over and desolate, with the tops of a few trees surviving. but after awhile, the burnt over land fills with trees, because pine cones survive fire and thus a whole crop of trees has room to grow. so you look out over a whole forest of trees, all exactly the same age and therefore the same size and shape. and over time, those trees get larger and start crowding each other out.
so at the edge of the water, trees jut out at an incredible angle, because when they were young trees they grew out over the water to get sunlight. and of course, as the trees on the shore grow, the trees at the water have to stretch out further to catch the sun. but pushing out further throws the tree further off balance, so it falls closer and closer to the horizontal until eventually it dies and falls into the water.
this is the way i approach problems.
