There exists a broken place in the woods. In a tree, on a branch, high above, where you’ll find a broken, little, big person. A person who could fall off the branch as easily as the wind changes, if their arms were anything other than steel cables. In a place that could just as easily be taken out of a fairy tale as a nightmare. Jagged branches and moss. Stubby knots and scars. The sort of roots where a gnome would set up shop, or the toothpick branches where cobwebs hang in the wind. It’s a meeting place, a place where you wait to be found. You hope it’s a meeting place...
You find these trees all over. Seattle, Hendricks Park, your backyard. It really doesn’t matter what town, time, or self, just as long as there’s a tree. One with sweeping hearts and crooked branches. Dusted limbs and twisted roots. You’ll know when you get there. The tree will tell you to climb, as it loves to hold onto everyone who’s scaled it’s climax. While you might be surrounded by hundreds of trees for acres and acres, this place is special for no reason other than those who visited it before you.
That’s the marvelous challenge; to find the path, the handholds, the scratches, the very same branches that lifted up others ahead of you. Each twig and stem and bough helps you ascend, like rough hands that fit perfectly into your own. Climb further on, to the others before you who are waiting above, calling you forward to join them at the peak. Where the wind sounds like laughter, from jokes told long ago and tucked away in the buds of leaves till they bear fruit and shed their tears. Where the hands of many lay gashed and bruised and caked in the sunny sensation of mud. Though you once climbed alone, there’s an unignorable sense of encompassing comradery that lets you feel safe wherever you fall.
So you sit in the nook of your branches, sheltered from the rain, laughing in the wind, and crying till your cheeks burn. The tree listens with a giddy sense of foresight, guessing where your story might go and begging for more at the end. It waits for your return, to the woods, to the branch, to the broken, little, big tree. To your meeting place, where one day if you’re lucky, another person will stop and look up. Another having heard the tree’s call. Another hearing your story, watching it turning golden and drift slowly, spiraling, slowly down to their feet.