The Man in the Tree

What were you like as a child? Were you quiet? Boisterous? Shy?

I was imaginative, and lived in a world of daydreaming, reading books and poetry, and playing “let’s pretend”. I enacted fairy tales with my friends, and spent many an afternoon lying in a hammock watching clouds race across the sky.

I still love to imagine, seeing whimsy in ordinary things all around me. Early this morning Marla and I went for a short bike ride just after our walk. We pedaled down the street until we came to the lane that leads to a nearby lake. Turning down the lane, I saw the huge oak tree that had captured my imagination since I was 12 years old.

The tree stood in a grove of oaks and its great canopy of branches was thick with leaves. If I stood just in front of the tree its knotted and gnarled trunk looked to my young eyes like a man trapped in the tree. It still looks that way to me today. I hope you can see what I do.