At the far edge of the forest, the traveller found a garden.
It was not enclosed by walls.
No one had planted its borders.
Plants grew wherever the ground permitted them, climbing fallen trees, spreading across stones and turning their leaves towards the open sky.
The traveller stayed there for several days.
On the first morning, he noticed a vine growing beside a tall post.
At dawn, it lay close to the ground.
By afternoon, its newest tendrils had curled around the post.
The following day they had climbed higher.
The traveller watched carefully.
“You have found something to climb,” he said.
The vine continued growing.
He touched the post.
It was rough wood.
He touched the vine.
It was soft and green.
Neither seemed to contain the idea of the other.
Yet together they had produced a strange result.
The vine had changed its direction.
The traveller remembered the old woman.
What can happen between this thing and something else?
He watched the vine for a long time.
Then he saw something stranger.
A young shoot was growing towards the light.
As the sun moved across the sky, the shoot slowly altered its direction.
Morning found it leaning east.
By evening, it had turned towards the brighter opening between the trees.
The traveller followed its movement.
“You know where the light is,” he said.
The shoot continued turning.
The traveller frowned.
Perhaps know was too strong.
He tried again.
“You can find the light.”
The shoot continued turning.
He sat beside it.
There was no face to read.
No eye looking towards the sky.
No voice.
No gesture that said there.
Only the slow alteration of the plant's growth.
The next day a stone was lying in the path of a root.
The root approached it.
Then, over many days, divided around it.
One part passed to the left.
The other to the right.
Eventually they met again beyond the stone.
The traveller crouched beside them.
“You have found an obstacle.”
The root did not reply.
He laughed.
“What am I doing?”
He stood and walked on.
At midday he came upon a patch of plants whose leaves had closed.
He returned in the evening.
They had opened again.
The next morning they were closed.
He watched for several days.
Something in the changing conditions altered the plants.
But what?
He thought of the words people used in the villages he had passed through.
Sensing.
Detecting.
Responding.
Knowing.
Reading.
He tried each word against what he had seen.
The words seemed too large.
He returned to the vine.
The vine had not read the post.
It had not recognised the post as a support.
It had not decided that climbing would be useful.
Yet its growth had changed when the post entered its world.
The plant had been organised in such a way that something in its surroundings could alter what happened next.
The traveller looked towards the light.
The light was still light.
It had not become a message.
The stone was still stone.
It had not announced itself as an obstacle.
The post was still wood.
It had not offered itself as a ladder.
And yet each had entered into the life of the plant.
The traveller began to wonder whether this was what the old woman had meant when she said that the country was not one country.
Perhaps there were forms of life for which the world was full of differences that never became thoughts.
Differences that simply altered what happened next.
He found a small plant growing beside a rock.
Its stem had turned away from the rock and towards the open ground.
The traveller moved the rock.
The next day the stem had altered its direction again.
He replaced the rock.
After several days, the plant had turned once more.
The traveller stood over it.
“Do you understand what I am doing?”
The plant did not answer.
He smiled.
“No. That was the wrong question.”
He left the rock where it was.
That evening, as the sun disappeared, he sat among the plants.
The garden was full of responses.
Leaves opened and closed.
Roots divided and changed direction.
Stems bent towards light.
Vines found supports.
Flowers opened at particular times.
Nothing spoke.
Nothing needed to.
The traveller began to understand that there was another kind of relation between a being and its world.
A difference could matter without becoming a message.
The world could alter what a living thing did without first being represented inside it.
There did not have to be a picture of the stone somewhere within the root.
There did not have to be an image of the light inside the leaf.
There did not have to be a little voice saying this way.
The plant changed because the plant was the kind of thing that changed in such circumstances.
That was all.
Yet it was not little.
The traveller looked around the garden.
He had entered it expecting to find silence.
Instead he had found something stranger.
A world in which everything seemed to be responding to something, while almost nothing seemed to be saying anything.
He remained there until nightfall.
The stars appeared.
The plants continued their quiet work.
The traveller lay back upon the ground.
For the first time, he wondered whether meaning might not be the beginning of responsiveness after all.
Perhaps responsiveness came first.
Perhaps a being could be changed by the world long before the world became something it could recognise.
And if that were true, then there was a place between the silent country and the world of meanings.
A place where differences mattered.
A place where possibilities changed.
A place where nothing yet had to stand for anything else.
The traveller closed his eyes.
The garden remained awake.
But it did not speak.
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