The Tree

 

(not the actual Tree)

When I was little, my friend and I played every day. We would run through my horse pasture miles and miles, (actually less than 2 acres) until we reached the Tree. Later we found out it was only a fig tree, although it only grew one fig, which was promptly plucked, examined, studied, thrown around, and probably eventually eaten by the unwelcome cows that grazed there sometimes.

            A long time before me, the Tree had split in half. It had a deep crack down into the core of the earth, miles and miles until you could see the magma and feel its heat. Or it ended in the dirt and became the forbidden home of many an unknown species of spider. Either way, it was cracked just down the middle, being the “Y” to our YMCA.

            On either side of the splintered Tree crack grew two new stumps, each which grew two huge stumps a short distance from its source. One side of the Tree repelled us, its branches growing upward, slippery and difficult to climb. The other side, its first huge branch grew horizontally, 3 feet from the ground, with cracks making tic-tac-toe squares on its upward facing surface. The second branch grew and branched up, making so many lookout perches for us.

            We would run at the speed of light through the tall, horse-mowed grass, down and up again through the dry creek-bed, at full speed to the Tree. The horizontal branch was the control center, the lookouts just that, watching for intruders: Nazi submarines (AKA: Lassie the cow), Russian spy planes (Fotah and Burgundy the horses), or The Law (my parents).

            We plucked the leaves from the Tree and used the white sticky sap to play tic-tac-toe or write secret notes, or swiftly disappearing mission logs. We used the sap to glue leaves together, to the Tree, to ourselves. The broad fig leaves were everything: dinner plates, hats, little servant followers under our dictator regimes.

            Our fig Tree had, growing out of its head, a million billion vine-like branches extended out over the dry creek bed, low enough to leap, reach, grab, and swing. We were Tarzan, yelling wild girls swinging and tumbling through the rainforest. One vine-branch in particular had a certain shape, like a sideways “J” that was the perfect horse saddle. It bounced with such elasticity, and never ever broke.

            A few years later, when I was about 8 or 9, I had finally fallen short of my friend. She, right there in her front yard, had a tall evergreen tree of some kind that was absolutely perfect for practice climbing. My scrawny, scrambling legs could no longer keep up with her on our Tree, or any other for that matter. Soon she was on top of that other, forbidding half of the Tree, looking down on me with smug satisfaction.

            While she was up in the sky, laughing at the birds in the sky and the silly animals on the ground, I found my place, tucked in a nook in the branches with a book. And here was the crack down the middle of our lives. I would forever be the bookworm, the studier, the sedentary one. She did all the sports, ran the playground every day, and played with all the kids. She was rambunctious and I was somber. She wanted to run around and do things, and I wanted to direct her action.

            She was my yang and I was her yin. And our Tree was our Everything.

 

(photos from here and here)