I’m long past my tree-climbing days, but that doesn’t stop me from staring. From my office huge picture window, I often slouch, put my feet up and just watch a nearby tree go nowhere. It comforts me.
I think the oddest things, how cold air bumping into warm makes wind, from tornados to gentle breezes. There’s something soothing about watching the top branches blow, back and forth, as if trying to pull free and race elsewhere. I guess we all seek freedom. It’s not an original thought of course, but from one tiny acorn that mighty oak has grown. You ever wonder how many seeds, daisies to sequoias, there are in the world? Is gazillion a number?
In my boyhood home of Santa Clarita, former sleepy ranch village, beyond to continents I’ll never visit, how many latchkey children wander? Put that on my resume. I used to be one. Mom and dad couldn’t stand one another. When I was 7, I left for parts unknown with my dad. A few boxes in a 1956 palomino-colored Studebaker President and all I knew was that we were headed north.
Off and on, I lived in Palo Alto. It’s not information you want to leak out, but, I was a gifted child. Under accusing stares of my co-little people, I had completed all my elementary school curriculum by second grade. Divorce, road trip and I was enrolled in a strange new campus near Stanford University. The administration seemed disinterested that I already studied Evita Peron, negative integers and how to build a Pleistocene-era Indian teepee from wooden coffee stirrers. I began the boring task of repeating elementary school. Unintended consequence? Trust not authority.
Bullies seemed to erupt from cracks in the sidewalk and pop from behind dark corners. Dad worked swing shift and often, overtime. I wouldn’t see the dear fellow, or anyone in the empty apartment or hotel room, until weekends. One late afternoon, I sprinted home with a gang of toughs in hot pursuit. It seems so cartoonish, recalling. I managed to frantically jam the key in the lock, open the front door, then slam it on three or four skinny arms. They pulled back, leaving enough time to shut and bolt it. I could hear fists pounding, the door holding against kicks and youthful threats of future retribution. I got beat up once, by a flange of older boys. The blows didn’t hurt so much. Why did they hate me so profoundly? They didn’t even know me.
Life forges us. Some become boxers. Some commit suicide. Some write satire.
Poorly.
Around that time, I discovered plants. From gangs I’d hide in banks of ivy, often at night, sometimes for an hour or more. Amazing how still you learn to become. I found my friend, the tree. It was a gigantic conifer, in the middle of a park. I wonder. Almost 70 years ago. Is it still there? I smile, thinking of the good flora. It was as if God Himself had built that tree, just for me. The branches were sturdy, positioned just right for a 7-year-old to ascend toward heaven. Climbing was a process. I’d return, each day, climbing a little higher. Finally, one day, I made it nearly to the top, a good four stories above terra firma, with all its nuisances of gravity, trials and woes. Descending was always harder.
At the top was a perfect fork of crisscrossing branches, seemingly tailored in advance to fit my skinny body. Eventually, I found the courage to lay down on my sanctuary bed, followed by cupping my hands behind my head and just — surrendering.
Sometimes a wind would visit and the tree gently swayed. I panicked that first breeze, clutching the trunk with every arm and leg available. Soon, it became apparent. The tree wasn’t going anywhere. Above my nest, my secret hiding place, were a few layers of branches, enough to shade direct sunlight but not too shady I couldn’t see blue sky and clouds languidly floating by. Below? I could spy on picknickers.
A late self-discovery visited the other day. I was a child with many issues. But, resting in those branches? I found out: Problems couldn’t climb trees. Maybe those dark thoughts were afraid of clouds, wary of nearby angels who invisibly frolicked atop them.
There was a study long ago. Some scientist noted that the mere image of a tree with low-hanging branches is soothing to most people. It’s an ancient, genetic memory, of when we were simpler, monkeyish and a lot nimbler. A tree was sanctuary from a sneak attack by predators. Isn’t that beyond ironic? What’s wrong with us that the very ancestors that used us a kibble we now keep as house pets? I’m tempted to take a rolled-up newspaper and whack the nose of lovable reincarnated giant hyena across the nose and announce, “And THAT’S for chasing me 10 million years ago B.C….!!!!!”
Relax, mutts and tabbies. All’s forgiven. You’re safe.
A tree as home? The romantic in me will edit out inconvenient issues, like rain, snow, cold, no access to a TV with comforting 1958 first-run “Maverick” episodes. But, in narcotizingly cozy late summer days of boyhood, clouds would move. Time wouldn’t. Remember that wonderful Beatles’ lyric?
“Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go, nowhere to go …”
At this moment, I sit. Instead of working, I’m slouched in my overstuffed leather desk chair, staring at branches slowly dancing back and forth. The Greeks — well, some of them — believed that wind was caused by the random fluctuation of branches. I like that possibility, that when the wind blows, the trees, in a friend’s smiling recognition, are waving at me.
Sometimes I think about my fraternity of latchkey kids, the ones who secretly return to empty homes, make their own meals, read their own bedtime stories. They’re less uncountable than the all the seeds in the world, but still, are legion, far too many.
Some, don’t have trees …
John Boston is a local writer.
