Tree

The sun shone high in the noon day sky as birds twittered and bugs buzzed through the lazy heat and blue air.

The tree spread her branches out wide and shook her glistening green leaves, disturbing a squirrel that was on the hunt for some seeds. He chittered his displeasure, jumping stealthy to her sister’s branch where he scurried into her depth and disappeared.

The tree waited patiently for her visitors to arrive. They had recently begun to frequent the forest as the days grew longer and the heat stayed trapped in the pastures beyond. The visitors used her stately branches as shade for lunches on a blanket laid across the forest floor, or to read to each other aloud from books about Vikings or Pirates.

In her time on the earth, the tree had grown quite majestic. She towered over her brothers and sisters, giving her a vantage point where she could catch a glimpse of the red shingles on the home where her visitors lived. Over the passing seasons, as the tree’s leaves faded to golds and reds and then fell to the forest floor to be used as winter shelter for the smallest of creatures, until spring and summer sent her from buds to her full green glory again, she watched her visitors grow and multiply. She decided it was her duty to stretch up higher and spread out wider to give them extra shade and extra limbs to climb. She had grown fond of them. You could say she might have even begun to love them as much as a tree could love a human. And they seemed to love her back.

The smaller visitors filled her branches with hand-painted ornaments and birdhouses, while the older visitors snuck kisses and nips from a bottle under her canopy. On one of these occasions, the visitor with the flowing red hair ran to her with tear-stained cheeks and hugged her so tight, it felt as if letting go would unravel the world. She wanted to cry with it; to share its pain. Instead, she vowed to protect them as if they were her own children, which made her grow larger still.

Soon, not only could she see the red shingles, but brightly lit windows of the second floor, where she tried to imagine the things that went on behind their glow. How did they make the food they brought in baskets? How did they change the bright colors they wrapped themselves in? Did they sleep in there like they did leaning against her trunk? Were they as safe in there as they were when they were with her?

One day, close to the end of the long summer when she could feel her leaves beginning to die, the littlest of her visitors dawdled off the trail and up to her vastness. It gripped onto her bark with one small hand while the other protruded from its mouth, and the tree wondered why it was traveling alone. The little ones usually never went far without one of the older ones close behind. She looked out towards the visitor’s home, but could not see if any of them were coming after this one, with its padded pants and rosy red face. A rumble off in the distance made the tree glance towards where the sun was making it’s decent and she was surprised to see late afternoon storm clouds quickly roiling in. The wind picked up and she tried to sway towards the little visitor and push it along back towards the path and the safety of its own home beyond, but it gripped on tighter and wouldn’t let go. Instead, it pulled its hand out of its mouth and let out a wail. Not wanting to be outdone, the wind followed suite, raising its voice to a howling siren song as the rain began to come down, softly at first, and then with more ferocity once the dark ominous clouds blocked out the last of the sun’s rays.

The tree tried her best to fight off the wind and rain by bowing her branches around the little visitor and staying as unmoving and stoic as the home it came from. Lightening lit up the sky and thunder boomed, making the little one screech and bury its’ face in her harsh exterior. She glanced up into the storm just in time to see a tree, no more than a mile away, fall to his death on the forest floor. But there was no time to mourn, the little one had begun to shiver and moan, its grip loosening from her side. She was afraid the power of the storm would propel its small body into the rushing rain water that had formed between her and her sister.

Without thinking, she used all of her might to fight against the battering wind and rain to lean her branches down just in time to scoop the little visitor up off the forest floor before it was lost forever to the darkness and the cold. She cracked and popped as she straightened back up, securing the little one against her trunk up on a branch protected by the worst of the storm under a tight canopy of her largest leaves. Exhausted, the tree let the storm batter her without trying to fight back. Now that her visitor was safe, the storm could do what it wished, she would fight it no longer.

After some time, the wind began to die down and the rain went from stinging pellets to a light drizzle. The clouds thinned, letting in a ray of white moonlight that made the tree look like it was glowing with radiance. Off in the distance she could just make out frantic swaying lights coming from the direction of the home as the little ones older visitors drew closer, calling out over and over again “Eric!” She was too drained to set her little one back safely on the forest floor for them to collect, so she tried to spread her branches away from it instead so they would be able to see it there, wet yes, but asleep and safe.

Once they were near enough for the little visitor to hear them, it woke up and began a screeching cry that brought them to the trees side. Confusion ensued as they not only tried to figure out how such a small creature could have climbed that high in a storm, but how they were going to get it down safely. Once a tall ladder was brought back from the home by two of the older visitors with hair on their faces, one of them climbed up and brought the little one down into the waiting arms of the one with red flowing hair. They wrapped it in a blue blanket, then the red haired visitor turned and placed her palm against the tree’s trunk and whispered “thank you,” before they turned and disappeared down the trail.

She whispered, “You’re welcome,” on a light breeze that followed them along the trail. She had protected one of her visitors that she considered her child. They were a family now forever and always, just like she was linked to every other tree in the forest, she would be linked to these visitors for all time. They would protect her, as she had protected them. So she continued to grow.

The seasons began to change again, and a few summers went by without incident. By now she could see not only the red shingles and second floor windows of their home, but when the wind blew just right she could make out the door that released them and swallowed them back up as they went about their days like busy ants. Her smaller children became bigger and the bigger ones became frail and grey. New little ones came and covered her lower branches with ornaments and birdfeeders.

One beautiful summer day when the air wasn’t too hot and the birds were playing a game high in her branches, a new visitor came. It had a bright yellow bowl on its head. It made a hissing noise like a snake as it stopped at each tree along the trail. When it arrived by her side, it squinted its eyes as it looked up at her height and whistled. She was never one to shy away from admiration, so she lifted her branches proudly and let a light breeze rustle her bright green leaves into a kaleidoscope of light down on its face. The new visitor stepped back and looked up at her in awe. She wondered if it was new to the forest and would start joining her children when they came to enjoy her shade and climbing branches.

The tree watched curiously as the visitor pulled a can out of its pocket and shook it vigorously. It popped the lid off and walked up to her trunk. Holding the can up, it depressed the top, causing the snake sound to escape as an orange X formed on her brittle brown trunk. She watched in shock as it moved on to her smaller sister, did the same thing and moved on down the trail. A wave of panic began to pulse through her root system deep under the ground where she was connected to all her other brothers and sisters. The orange X began to soak into her, making her cringe from the chemical feel of it.

She waited for her children to come and see what the horrible yellow visitor had done to her, but they didn’t come that day. Or the next, or the next. The tree would glance in the direction of her children’s home, but she did not see any of them going in or out. At night the windows did not glow with warm light. They did not return even when large monsters arrived bellowing out black smoke and more visitors in yellow arrived and began to put up orange netting. Early one morning when the monsters began to knock down her brothers and sisters one right after the other she called out to them in a panic, but they had abandoned her. She thought they would be there for her like she had been there for them. She thought they had become a family and she had grown tall for them. She couldn’t understand what she had gotten wrong.

When her time came, she stood stoic in the summer light and just before she fell she passed her knowledge on through her roots to her younger brothers and sisters that she knew were safe. She told them of the visitors that had become her children only to abandon her in the end. She told them to grow only for themselves.