TREES I'VE LOVED

memoir

TREES I’VE KNOWN AND LOVED

There is something about trees that creates in me a longing. I’ve climbed them all my life because they offer a better perspective. I love them because, even as a kid, I knew things were not as right and good as I was being told, so was compelled to seek a more comfortable point of view about things; real life wasn’t doing it for me. I’ve been on the hunt for a clean escape as long as I can remember.

When I was six, our front yard Mimosa was smooth barked, low limbed, and easy to climb. I spent a lot of time in its skyward branches. It was a place to visit Robin Hood and dream of Tarzan in that alternate universe where I was king. Ha! I’ll never forget swinging on a limb about six feet off the ground when my hands slipped and I belly flopped flat on the ground. I’d never had the breath knocked out of me before, so I just assumed I was dead. I stayed that way for a long time, just laying there wishing mom would come say last rights. There was no light to beckon me, and the only dead people I knew about were back and fully recovered on the next episode of whatever westerns I watched, so there was no one to greet me, not even Jesus. When I finally resurrected my poor soul, and staggered indoors to find her, she said, “Agh, you just lost your wind, now go out and play, can’t you see I’m busy?” The Peach trees in the side yard were calling my name so I headed out there for a sweet treat, though I had to pinch out the brown, wormy bits.

The first “real” book I ever read, was Robin Hood. He lived in the forest, and was comfortable with trees for friends. He was my hero, and his book was just one bar in an open gate to everything I dreamed of. My favorite place to read was in the canopy of trees, and there was a fine one out by the road in front of our house in Tennessee. I discovered Enid Blyton and Willard Price, both of whom wrote adventure novels for folks my age. I read them in my lofty perch, where I watched my friends laugh and walk right under my seat with bats, balls, and gloves, knock on my door and hear my mom say she had no idea where I was, then they’d wander off to a field around the block. I was too busy lost in caves where Nazi spies were up to no good, or in some exotic country capturing wild animals for circuses and zoos. Maybe that’s why I never got caught up by whatever happens with team sports. The last time I was in Memphis, I drove by that house and my tree was about a hundred feet tall, three feet in diameter, and had broken the sidewalk, the lowest limb twenty feet off the ground.

There have been other tree-friends along the way, but an important one was a big Magnolia In Pensacola, Florida. I met her while in my seventh grade world geography class, the one where, for no reason I can think of, my teacher hated me. I know he did because of how he scowled whenever I caught his eye. And that time I found someone else’s required journal for his class. Neither I nor my three friends at the bus stop had done ours, so we all copied that one. Word for word. Everyone else got “A’s” and “B’s” while I got a “D.” We compared them afterward, and they were all identical. But “Maggie Magnolia” lived in the mow space between the sidewalk and the curb a few houses down from the school. She was a magnificent lady and huge for her species. While Mr. Webster droned on about whatever he was want to drone on about, I stared out the window and had important conversations with her about the whys and wherefores of life as a twelve-year-old. She said my horizons were still wide enough to go anywhere, including straight up. In those days NASA was new, and had more rockets explode than they launched, but they were getting better at it all the time. I fancied myself an artist and drew her on notebook paper, her green silhouette divided into the squares marked out by window panes. From what I can see on Google Earth, she was probably a causality of hurricane Ivan, who murdered a number of my woody friends back in 2004.

The very best time I had in the tops of trees was in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. We had moved to the jungles on Highway 98, two miles from our nearest neighbor and right on Santa Rosa Sound. I was once again back in the prison called Clubbs Jr. High but this time, it was my world history teacher. I know why she hated me. She was a tall woman with a sharp nose just above a permanent frown. Her long dresses and comfortable shoes rested on a frame defeated by Florida’s no class-size limit and the frustrations that come with spending day after day with hormonally imbalanced juveniles. There were probably forty or fifty of us in there, poor woman. She devoted the first two weeks of class to review from the previous year. (Did I mention I liked to read? I read everything in front of me from cereal boxes at breakfast to historical novels about Julius Caesar’s campaigns in England and France. Evidently most people don’t do that.) At the end of two weeks Mrs. Wilson went around the class, beginning with the first kid in row one… “Johnny, what have you learned in here that you didn’t already know?”

“Um… err… uh… Columbus discovered America!” or some such ridiculous thing.

The second kid had about that same level of insight, and after about five or six stupid, common knowledge answers, I was raising my hand to tell her I must be in the wrong class, I rode the long bus. But she never called on me till it was my turn. I shook my head and gave her a frown of my own...

“I haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know.”

Sigh. I was not allowed to go to the bathroom in that class all year. But I had the school library and a whole forest all to myself.

Unfortunately, her question became a watershed for me, and was just the beginning. I asked myself her question in every class I ever took after that, and if I couldn’t come up with something, my time was being wasted and I lost all respect for, not just for the teacher and subject, but the whole system. I think that’s why I became a teacher myself, and told this story a million times over the years. Did you know that ninety-five percent of dropouts are in the top five percent of IQ and ability?

But the trees! The jungle around our house was composed mostly of Live Oaks, Black Pine, one of Maggie’s sisters and some of her nieces and nephews. I loved them. Especially one of the moss hung acorn factories about twenty feet through the underbrush next to our driveway. Someone had leaned the hood of an ancient Ford pickup against its trunk and I was able to climb that to reach the lowest branch, and from there up and out till I could sit in the fork of a limb directly above the red clay drive. My parents left for work and drove right under me. They never knew. She was a great tree friend, and I named her Sylvia, because I read a lot and knew some things. I have no idea how many days I skipped school to climb up there and read. I made the librarian suspicious… “What do you do with all these books?”

“Uhm… read them.”

“You read a book a day?”

“Well, depends on the book, sometime it takes two days.”

She huffed and didn’t say anything else.

The last time I was back at the old homestead it had been turned into a National Seashore, complete with a ranger station. It is barren, all the trees are gone except Maggie’s sister whose trunk is thick and strong. All her limbs are gone but for a few scraggly hangers on. Hurricane Ivan, again.

At least high school was free, so I wasn’t wasting my parent’s money. I loved my humanities, and history because they were challenging. I made “D’s in Mrs Hull’s English because, well, I’ve said… that is until until we got a student teacher. Her name was Karen Weijkus, a local surfer girl who looked like Pamela Anderson’s sister. I made “A’s” for the three six weeks she was there and marveled at the little flames that sprung up wherever she walked. Remember, it was the sixties and skirts were, well, do some research.

I did, in fact, waste some of my parent’s money in college, and it wasn’t until halfway through my second attempt at being a sophomore, that I figured it out. Everything they throw at you is a game, and they cheat, but you don’t have to play. That is unless you like a having a lover, a roof, food, a TV and other nice stuff. Sure beats standing on some corner with a cardboard sign. Ironic what they use to make books and cardboard, though, ain’t it?

Author's Note

I attempted to post this before, but the site is somewhat awkward, and I cannot find it, so, maybe not.

Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

Forgive me for choosing this excerpt but it's so very visual and undoubtedly wickedly true: - 'She was a tall woman with a sharp nose just above a permanent frown. Her long dresses and comfortable shoes rested on a frame defeated by Florida’s no class-size limit and the frustrations that come with spending day after day with hormonally imbalanced juveniles. ' I've just recovered from reading that three times!

As a lover and yes, a climber of trees (you dont have to be a big brother to climb trees!) I think your memories, thoughts, activities and opinions are so wittily tho' sometimes a little sad However does that stem from memories or are certain things engraved because of this or that mood? Whatever and however this is a great wonderful description of your You: play, school, books, people and of course, TREES!

Almost a noble ending, 'Sure beats standing on some corner with a cardboard sign. Ironic what they use to make books and cardboard, though, ain’t it?'

[Vol]

Hello Dearest Emma!
I occasionally write about random memories and the ones in this piece are all absolutely true. It is a terribly incomplete list which excludes many others of multiple species. Some with high swings over cliffs and who knows how many treehouses I built in my youth? I am a wood sculptor and so it is not just trees I love, but wood, which can be as beautiful as any jewelry.
Best of all, posting it here got a response from you... Thanks for reading, and thanks for saying such nice stuff!

[emmajoygreen]

I do nice stuff quite well at times. I too love wood, once spent ages in the New Forest with pieces of wood that looked as if they were about to turn into 'butterflies or the like' Do you create from or with the shape of wood? Please write more.. am sure others would, like me, love to know more. Take care, jeep safe, sir teacher

[emmajoygreen]

jeep? oops, now marked down to a C 1

[Vol]

I sent you an email with pics of a few of my carvings.

[Carola]

hi vol, i loved your tree story memoir.
I used to read enid blyton as a youngster too, & the heidi books & anne of green gables. i loved getting lost in a different world where my parents weren't constantly telling me what not to do.
the strange thing when thinking back to my teenage years, it's hard to find any good memories whilst I was living at home, except my books, some of which I still have.
have a good weekend.
cheerio carola

[Vol]

For all those decades i thought Enid must be obscure and a secret unique to me, but a couple of years ago, she showed up in a crossword puzzle I was working on! And now, here you are! Weren't those awesome stories... Two boys, two girls and Kiki! What fun to find a companion to enjoy such adventures now I'm old... as soon as i get done posting this note, I'm heading to Amazon to see if I can find copies!

[Vol]

I just ordered "The Castle of Adventure." by Enid Blyton, I am anxious to see her style from my ancient standpoint.