Saturday, May 7, 2011

If a Tree Falls in the Front Yard...

Across the street from our house in Little Rock stood a tree that has remained the epitome of climbing trees. We only lived in Little Rock until the summer before I started 3rd grade, so I was scampering amongst the branches of that tree with my neighborhood friends around the time I was 6- or 7-years-old. We'd climb to the top of the tree and just sit, watching the world pass by some 40 or 50 feet below us.

When we moved to Garland, TX, I found myself in a neighborhood teeming with trees ripe for climbing. And that's what my new friend, Jeff, and I did. Our favorites, though, were the Black Walnut tree in my backyard and the tree in his front yard. We'd spend hours in those trees as snipers, paratroopers, Guerrilla's, or kids infatuated with G.I. Joe.

Today, Mini-Me helped me as I cut down a Mimosa tree in our front yard. While he was cutting the small branches from the larger limbs I'd already chopped down, I realized that our neighborhood is too young to offer up the wealth of climbing trees I knew as a child. Mini-Me's formative tree-climbing years won't be as fruitful as mine and I feel for him. There are few joys in the world as moving as that mixture of nervous fear, excitement, and pride that fills your chest as you reach the top branches of a tree. There are also few views of a neighborhood that are as lasting as those obtained amongst leaves outstretched to the sun.

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