Evolution - Part 1

Erase que se era una vez ... hace mucho tiempo ... there was a little boy named Tumaini that lived in a beautiful mountainous land around 32S, 70W coordinates on planet Earth.

Tumaini was 11 years old, smart, observant, and very curious about all the natural things that surrounded him. He lived in a village very high in the mountains at the edge of the tree line. The combination of thick forests below the line and incredible mountain formations above the line only helped to get him wondering about things even more.

Through the seasons, he would see the snow come in the winter and the glaciers grow, in the spring he would see things melt and rivers and waterfalls form as they descended down the mountains. People in his village were happy and Tumaini's family was close. His father and mother worked hard to make sure that Tumaini and his younger sister always had food and shelter and a nurturing environment. Everybody in the village were able to provide for themselves but it was hard work most of the year.

Children in Tumaini's village began to work in the fields and with the animals at around 4 years old. At that age, their responsibilities were limited and mostly confined to fetching things from the village to the men and women in the fields or running messages back and forth. By the time children in the village reached 8 or so, they knew most things about crops, plantings, and the ebb and flow of the seasons.

Tumaini was a little different than most 11 year olds. From the time he was very young, he was enthralled by nature and had developed a unique ability to feel things around him beyond the typical seasonal predictions that most people in the village were able to do.

Tumaini was able to close his eyes and feel the smallest changes in wind direction, speed, atmospheric pressure, sounds, temperatures, humidity, and some would even say, changes in things that weren't even there. But they were. Many in the village spoke of Tumaini's ability as something similar to the skills that blind people develop as a way to compensate for their lack of sight.

From the time he was little, Tumaini would sit alone in the forest for hours. Closing his eyes and just listening and feeling. He always wondered if it would be possible to understand how all things arrived to that very moment by understanding causality and then by extrapolating forwards to understand where things were going.

Tumaini wanted to connect the wind, the mountains, the sky, the stars, and life somehow. His predictions began to amaze everybody in the village. He was able to predict things like temperature changes, vegetation changes, and rainfall way before anybody in the village had ever been able to do. He was even able to predict things like changes in patterns in ant colonies.

When Tumaini was turned 11, he had a breakthrough. He realized that the strongest force he felt, that of the trees around him, was that of a sentient being. He felt that the trees were not just following causal effects in their movements like other things he had observed around him. He noticed that sometimes their branches would sway in a way that felt like they were not driven by external forces.

Tumaini also began to notice other things like the shape and timing of zap drips and how branches would grow in discernible but different patterns from others around them. Like if these events had a will of their own. Just like humans or animals. It felt like the trees were making conscious choices.

Once Tumaini realized this, he began to carefully observe and document everything that happened around this one tree with which, for some reason, he felt the strongest connection. This was the tree were he would rest after a long day in the fields. This was the tree were he started his observations of nature all round him when he was very young.

He never understood why he had chosen this specific tree but now he was beginning to suspect that the tree actually chose him.

TO BE CONTINUED ...