Birdies and Babies

And a big fat snake

Trees, trees, trees. Oh, the countless thousands of hours I’ve spent in this life contemplating trees — ever since I was knee high to a coon dog. Some may say that I am making it up, but I vividly remember my neighbor’s weeping willow tree when I was 5 years old. Unlike my daughter, I can remember a lot of my early childhood. And a lot of those memories were actually connected with trees. From age 4 I remember my grandfather’s cherry tree. He had placed me up in a branch. I held on for dear life with both hands. Eventually, I braved releasing one hand from the tree branch and reaching out to pick a cherry and eat it. Except for the fear, I was like a monkey in a tree. I ended eating so many cherries I got sick.

My daughter may not remember her early childhood but I sure do. And a certain tree suddenly comes to mind. It was a box elder tree and it grew right outside the kitchen window of the cabin we were living in while my daughter was just under one year old. It was in Madrid, New Mexico just south of Santa Fe. Madrid was an old mining ghost town that had been re-inhabited by hippies in the Seventies. In the Eighties, renegade artists and other social outcasts invigorated the ghost town. The population of humans was around 300 then but the animal population was far greater.