bhaskar saikia

Look up into a forest canopy on a quiet afternoon, and you may witness one of nature’s most delicate secrets—crown shyness. The trees rise high, their branches stretching toward the light, yet they stop just short of touching. Instead of tangling into a single dense cover, they leave slender channels of space, rivers of sky flowing between them.

It is as though the trees know how to keep their distance, how to respect each other’s presence without intrusion. Crown shyness is a lesson written in leaves: growth does not always mean encroachment; sometimes it means restraint, humility, and balance.

But look closer at those channels. Don’t they resemble rivers? Blue streams meandering through a green forest seen from below. And what are rivers if not veins of the earth, carrying the lifeblood of rainwater to nourish all that lives? In this way, the treetops mirror the ground below. The macrocosm reflects the microcosm, and everything becomes a fractal—repeating patterns echoing across scale and form.

A river on the forest floor, a river of sky above. Branches that resemble tributaries, roots that mirror lightning, galaxies that spiral like seashells. Nature speaks in repetitions, reminding us that we are not separate from these designs but part of them.

Crown shyness, then, is not only a quirk of botany. It is an invitation to remember that boundaries are beautiful, that space itself is sacred, and that even in separation there is connection. For in the gaps between the crowns, light pours through. And in those rivers of sky, we glimpse the infinite pattern that binds us all.