This gnarly tree is on a side of campus I don't often go. I noticed it the other day as I was making my supervision rounds. A lone girl was climbing it, lost in her own world. I was reminded of the "helicopter" tree my sisters and I had when we were kids--it was a sycamore tree the grew along side a creek across a field that was next to our yard. We used to love to climb it and pretend we were in a helicopter (not sure why that...) spying on the rest of the world around us. It was big, beautiful, sturdy. We felt safe up in it, in spite of the heights we climbed to. Puts me in mind of another tree-activity we used to love: swinging. And singing Robert Louis Stevenson's poem about "The Swing." Maybe that was it: just being up in the air and seeing all that we could see:
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Til I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
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