Tree Time

When I was a little girl, I liked to climb trees. I liked to climb up in our apple trees with a book and a shaker of salt. I would sit among the branches, eating salted apples picked fresh from the tree and reading tales of the Bobbsey Twins or the Happy Hollisters or other stories that live in books. I liked to climb in our wisteria vines. If I found just the right one, I could sit and swing as if on the front porch of my very own nature-built house. My favorite tree, though, was our holly tree. This tree was thickly covered with an expansive mantle of spiked, prickly leaves. If I ducked down low, I could just make it under the outer branches without getting too badly pricked by the sharp points. Once past the outer layer, the tree opened up nicely on the inside with plenty of space and smooth bare branches, perfect for a little girl's climbing. I particularly liked being in the holly tree because that prickly outer layer provided excellent cover-up for a little girl who might not want to be found. I couldn't be seen through the thick layering of leaves. Who would think to look for me beyond the needle-point edges? No amount of calling or searching brought me from the holly tree until I deemed the time was right.

Looking back on that memory, several analogies of life occur to me. The one I'm thinking of tonight is this: It's not a bad idea to seek and claim places and times of personal retreat. Maybe we all need some kind of holly-tree place to temporarily shut the world out so that no amount of emailing or texting or phoning or IMing or Facebooking or name-calling can bring us from the tree until we are ready to be found. Those places of hidden quiet are important for thinking and dreaming and listening for The Voice that reminds us who we are and why we are here.

Here's to occasionally getting off the road and getting in a tree.