Counting spirals is a kind of meditation. The cones don’t care if I get it wrong.
I trace one ridge with a fingertip—clockwise first, then pick another and go the opposite way. The spirals cross like basket weave, five one direction, eight the other. Sometimes it’s eight and thirteen. The numbers aren’t random; they’re how the tree solved an engineering problem. How to arrange scales so each gets light and air and a decent chance at launching seeds into the world.
Bring a cone inside and it becomes a weather instrument. On a dry windowsill it relaxes, scales tilting out like hinged doors. Drop it in water and it clamps shut. Open, closed, breathing with humidity. No moving parts except wood responding to what’s around it—the plant’s timing system for when to release seed to wind.
Cedar leaves its signature on everything it touches. That resin scent clings to my fingers after I pocket a cone, and suddenly I’m back on mountain trails after rain, or standing in shrine groves with their braided rope, or passing roadside stacks of fresh lumber. One cone becomes a key to all that stored experience.
Out here, each cone tells a story. This one’s gnawed at the base where a squirrel worked for seeds. Another is polished smooth from tumbling in the ditch. A green one still hanging overhead stays closed and secretive. In late light, every scale casts its own tiny shadow, and the whole thing looks like a small planet with organized weather patterns.
I used to think geometry lived in textbooks—Euclid’s proofs and postulates and the tyranny of straight lines. Cedar taught me otherwise. Real geometry lives in shade and patience, in the way scales overlap just so, in the decision to grow slightly off-center from the row below. You learn this by standing still and counting spirals with your finger.
Try it sometime: pick up any cone and trace a spiral from bottom to top. Count softly. When you lose track, start over without irritation. Notice which direction feels natural, how your breathing changes, how the counting settles your mind. Let the tree’s mathematics work on whatever’s jangled in your nervous system.
When you’re finished, set the cone back where you found it. Leave the geometry in its proper place—outside, continuing its quiet work, perfect whether you counted correctly or not.