Climbing

           I climbed a tree today.  Coming back from a walk, my mind slowly emptying of the sunset and filling with home things, there it was: a tree I had passed a thousand times before.  It was standing as a gift beside the path.  I extended both my arms up to the first branch, a convenient nub of bark lifting my foot into the air.  My feet off the ground, I stopped thinking about what I was doing, didn’t worry about where my muscles were or whether they were strong enough or not and just climbed.

            Kids don’t worry about every action like adults do. They fall down a lot more, but they don’t worry about that either.  But anyone will tell you, they learn to ski or ride a bike of roller-skate ten times faster than any adult—without that uncomfortable sense of dignity to get in their way.

When I was a child, I climbed all the time.  The tree in back of my grandma’s must have felt very loved.  It was a small tree, with purplish bark.  Not one of the grand sweeping trees that take you to the sky.  But every time we visited grandma, I visited that tree as well. 

Up the tree, in this time, I sat and watched how the light sparkled off green needles, and welcomed myself back.  Two people and five cars passed by.  I wondered if anyone saw me, my white shirt brutally conspicuous against brown bark.  Probably none of them did, certainly none of them looked up when they passed.  But I worried a little that someone I knew might see me and shake their heads.

As a child I looked to trees as heroes.  Particularly during those long church activities, I would slip away and go up among the rustling green leaves.  The tree would sway comfortingly as I slipped inside, the book in my hand not slowing me at all.  I could sit in that green place for hours as my mom talked about life and my dad talked about fences and boats.  No one saw me, except a few other kids, and they didn’t count.  Mostly they couldn’t follow me anyway. 

In this time I sat on a branch while the wind carried the smell of an ending day.  I hadn’t noticed the day’s aloneness until it was gone, removed by the tree and the wind.  There is peace up there, held by a friend between heaven and earth.  It’s quieter than being in love.

One day a tree failed me.  A boy came up before I could ascend, introduced himself.  I knew him, he was the infuriating brat from a Sunday school class two years ago.  He had forgotten me.  Typical.  I had heard him asking Mandy two minutes before “who is she?”  Her response was crisp.

“She’s Marianne, don’t you remember her?  From Sunday school?” 

“No.”  He sounded dazed.  I wondered how many times he had been dropped on his head as a small child.  I shrugged, turned and went up the tree. A mistake.  He followed.  I tried to read to ignore him, but he talked and talked.  The tree was no refuge from this threat.  I descended and went to the swings; he couldn’t hover too close if I was swinging.  Instead he brought me an ice cream sandwich.  I was bewildered. 

Half an hour ago the bark crackled beneath my hand.  I sat on a big branch, only fifteen feet up.  Age has made me cautious.  My hair was tightly fastened in the braid I only learned how to form a year ago.  I used to shun binding my hair in any way.  Loose and tangled was fine.  Streaming in the wind like a dragon’s tail was better. 

In Montana there was a tree unlike others.  Majestic is not good enough, but no other word will do.  It was ready to be climbed.  Anyone could climb it.  It had strait branches perpendicular to the trunk that didn’t branch out into needles until the very ends.  One day, mom looked out the window to see us up the tree: me on top, then Lauralee, Paul, and little Allison at the bottom.  She yelled that we were never to go any higher.  I was pleased.  In the literalness way of a child, I always had the top spot after that.  But one day, all alone, I broke the edict.  I climbed past my branch that sat fifty feet up and halfway to the top.  I climbed up half of the half, then to the top that swayed back and forth in the wind.  I looked out at the field falling off down the hill the tree was on, a new green spotted with flowers.  I looked at the other trees, their roots higher on the hill, their tops swaying beneath me.  I usually took trees a few branches at a time, saving higher branches to enjoy on a later climb.  But I went up the last half of the tree in a single gasp that time.  I never could go up since.  I didn’t want to be caught, but more than that I was stopped by guilt.  Nothing else could have kept me away—the new perspective on a familiar place was intoxicating. 

That day and today, I came down the tree, from branch to branch, contorting to slip between branches, face up, spine bridging the branch below.  I reached the bottom, dangled, dropped, and came home from where two curving tracks of time and place surprised each other; and danced for a moment before shivering apart.