Why Does the Air Move?

Every day, just as the sun left twelve fingers to the horizon, and the grownups wouldn’t be home until much after dark, I left to listen to the trees.
I was old enough then that I could strap my shoes and button my coat by myself, so I was old enough then to leave my house by myself. I loved to strap my shoes and I loved that they were mine. All the other kids on my road had squeaky-shiny-new shoes that they had to clean and wipe and scuff and were too tight and too stiff. My shoes were not too tight or too stiff or had to be cleaned or wiped. They were mine.
Once the laces tied and my toes wiggled into place, it was six-seven-eight-nine steps to the walking path from the back porch.
I remember the adults speaking at me to be friends with the squeaky-shoed kids. I never understood why they would say that. I had plenty of those. If friends talk and listen and play, then it was true that I had plenty.
The maples told me of the men that stole their sap that they’d worked so hard to make. The cardinals played hide-and-seek in and out of shrubs that touched my knees. The flowers let me tell my stories and never interrupted. I had plenty of friends. My favourite friend was the lynx. The lynx would not play with me or listen to my stories or tell me about what the men did to him; the lynx showed me his beige back coat and taught me how to watch the wind.
“Lynx, why does it rain?” I asked.
He showed me to the crick, which had grown to a stream for the minnows to race against its current.
“Lynx, why does the air move?”
He showed me to the base of a spruce, which peak reached the clouds and grew into the sky. At my feet lay its cones, let go from tired hands and pushed by the breeze to a home in the dirt where they would grow taller than my house.
“Lynx, why do men take from my friends?”
He showed me to the edge of the treeline, atop a hill overlooking the world of the grownups. Tiny men moved machines twice their size, machines that squeaked and scuffed and made clouds darker than the night. Everything in their world seemed to move around those deep dark clouds. There were more machines then than I had seen in all my life. Monsters on tracks that screamed out of pipes. Silos and bridges scattered the valley, cluttering the home of my friends.
I still did not understand why the men did what they did, and I think the lynx did not know either. I did not like that wind atop the hill overlooking the world of machines and scuff.
It was every day, just as the sun left twelve fingers to the horizon, that I strapped my shoes, buttoned my coat, and stepped nine times to the path to listen to the maple trees and learn from the lynx. Three autumns passed by, with golden forests to match, that I strapped my shoes and left my house. I was much older then that I had grown too big, and my shoes were now squeaky-shiny and stiff. The grownups did not tell me to make friends with the kids with matching shoes. The grownups thought I had grown up too.
It was every day that I strapped my shoes and buttoned my coat and held on to the word of my friends; until the trees spoke less, and the crick dried up and there were no flowers left to listen to my stories.
“Lynx, why have my friends all left me?” I asked.
It was late into the season where white fell from the sky, and the lynx shed his beige for grey.
“Lynx,” we were sat atop the hill with the wind I had grown to tolerate, “why do you no longer teach me?”
The last thing I had ever learned from the lynx was the way his grey and melting beige disappeared into the dried brush overlooking the world of adults.