The Observer at the Edge of the Garden

There was an observer who lived beside a garden that had no gardener.

This was not because the garden had never been tended.

It was because nobody could agree on where tending ended and growing began.

The observer noticed that paths appeared after conversations.

Some were narrow.

Some widened immediately.

Some disappeared almost as soon as they were found.

Others remained for years without anyone knowing who had first walked them.

One morning, the observer saw two travelers arrive from opposite directions.

They stopped at the same clearing.

Neither appeared to recognize the other.

For a while, they stood looking at the same tree.

Then one pointed toward a path.

The other looked at it for a long time.

Neither followed.

The observer waited.

Nothing happened.

Then, sometime later, a third traveler arrived.

She stopped beneath the tree.

She did not know about the two earlier travelers.

She did not know why the path was there.

But when she saw it, she took it.

The observer wrote this down.

Then paused.

There was a temptation to call the path a legacy.

Another temptation was to call it an accident.

A third was to decide that the first travelers had created it.

The observer resisted all three.

Instead, the observer watched the traveler disappear around the bend.

Farther into the garden, another path had just become visible.

No one had announced it.

No one had named it.

Perhaps it had always been there.

Perhaps it had not.

The observer smiled at the uncertainty and kept watching.