Today I went for a walk in the park. I strolled alongside a stone wall, and then over the bridge, passing accordion players and children in hats and parents and lovers and people paying for hot cider with nickels, until eventually I found a fitting observation point from where the foliage seemed to explode. I sat down against the trunk of a massive weeping tree. Literally, the thing was crying. I asked him, “what’s the matter?” and he sniffled and replied in a low guttural voice, “I’m going to die again.” Looking back on it, my immediate thought process was one of insensitivity. Judging by his size, the weeping tree was clearly pretty old and had clearly undergone its seasonal life cycle more than a few times to have become so mighty. I could only help but wonder what the fuss was about. So I asked him something like, “well you’ll be alive again in the spring, right?” to which he responded, “yea,” and I added, “so what’s all the fuss about, haven’t you done this before? I don’t see any other trees crying.” Then he asked me if I had ever seen snow. I said, “sure, I’ve seen lots of it,” and he asked me how old I was. I said 19 and he started crying again in his deep weeping tree voice, which sounded like a busted refrigerator humming in the hull of a creaky wooden ship . I tried to calm him down and he eventually did, and told me that he was 278 and he hadn’t seen a flake in 20 years. He told me that snow was the most beautiful thing in the world, and that he used to actually look forward to his yearly death, just so he could feel it on his branches for a few days or hours or minutes. Since it had been staying warmer later, he told me, the snow always came after he died, and he was afraid that he’d never feel it ever again. I started to feel like I’d had a hand in this cruel deprivation. I thought about all the times I’d driven around aimlessly in my pollution emitting car, releasing massive quantities of diesel fumes into the air, and all the times I’d gone through can after can of hair spray with friends in my back while playing games like: “rock stars of the 80’s dodge-ball” or “1950’s nuclear house wife tag.” I envisioned the ozone layer cringing, and damning me to hell as I drove that car or finished that two for one pack of “StaysStuckSpray”. Immediately I knew what I must do: save the environment. I quickly devised a heroic plan, and told the weeping tree all about how I would go up north, and climb a mountain if necessary to get him as much snow as I could fit into as many coolers I could fit into the largest automobile I could find, bring it all back to him AFAP (as fast as possible), and douse him in the stuff. He seemed a good deal excited, if not, moderately hopeful. It’s tough to gauge exactly how a tree is feeling. I set off down the concrete path from whence I had come with a passionate gate, every step an exciting development in my newfound quest for terrestrial salvation. After maybe a quarter mile I’d come to the realization that my idea was ridiculous. My steps became smaller and smaller until I was shuffling slowly with my head hunched over like an elderly man with a back problem. I stopped in my tracks and figured the least I could do was tell the weeping tree that I couldn’t fulfill my promise, and that I was sorry, and maybe this was his lucky year. But what if he had already died? I turned, and ran in the direction of the weeping tree. Halfway there I felt something soft and cold touch the back of my neck, and then my eyebrow, and my right hand, and I looked around and realized it was starting to snow. “My god!” I thought, “I’ve willed it to snow!” I was overjoyed as I raced to see what the tree would say; he certainly wouldn’t be crying. I passed underneath the great hanging branches of the weeping tree, and I was right. I heard no low solemn crying. But also, I heard no great laugh or joyful exclamation. I heard nothing but the slow rustling of branches moving together in the wind. I can only hope that as I ran, he felt the single flake that would reawaken his love for this place on which he had grown, and with that in mind, had fallen asleep until the spring, when he would remember the snow and forget the years when he had been the weeping tree.