¶ … Childhood Home The house I lived in when I was a child lay quietly shaded by forty acres of trees. In the springtime, we would hear the soft tapping of the newly sprouting leaves in the wind. The summer would come with the pervading squeal of tree frogs that could be heard when eating a Popsicle on the deck or answering the phone, when we would have to cover up one ear to help stop the noise. In the autumn, the leaves of these trees would drift lazily down to earth by the dozens. And even in winter, when the leaves were under the snow and it seemed that even the trees great lives were stagnant, their shadows would loom over and calm the glare of the bleach-white snow.

Although everyone lived amongst them, we, the children of the neighborhood, owned the trees and woods. At least that was how it seemed to us. So we claimed the land under the trees as our own land, vehemently building adult-proof forts and exploring as far out as we dared. While the line of woods that stretched the line of my friends' houses was all filled and inhabited, I remember my family's two acres of it the most.

The beginning of the two-track path marked the edge of our property and of the path up the hill. If you turned immediately right, you would come to another, smaller path. My friends and I had blazed this one by ourselves. The path weaved through the fallen...

The path here went over a patch of loose gravel, which made walking up nearly impossibility. It was comparable to walking on a floor covered with small marbles. But my friends and I felt an overwhelming need to conquer this hill. Finally, we chipped in our saved-up quarters, and bought a rope. We tied one end to the tree nearest to the bottom and then struggled up to the top. Once we made it, breathing heavily and triumphant, we tied the other rope to the tree at top. From then on, we could hike up and down the slope with relative ease, clutching the rope tightly each way.
A few steps past the crest of this hill, we would be standing next to a giant, dying pine. It was the only tree of its kind on my land. This pine towered above the rest of the trees. It smelled of old, sweet sap that would soon be all over my clothes. Its branches were built well for climbing, spindling outward from the trunk in the manner of the red stripe of a barber shop pole. Soon we became quite familiar with it and came to refer to it as the Climbing Tree.

A often found myself stifling my footsteps to keep the squirrels from tramping off and the robins from flapping off. If the animals were still, then it was quiet and serene here. I came up this side when the phone rang too much at home…