The tree in the playground

[Loddfafner]

When I was in 4th and 5th grade, my closest friend was a tree. I built small temples out of twigs and pebbles around its trunk, I felt its presence, and I could hear what it had to say to me. It was by the playground where the hippy monitors looked so traumatized on the day the Beatles broke up.

I revisited that playground this afternoon. I had forgotten the tree until I felt its presence and rediscovered it. It was much bigger than I remembered. I identified it as a black oak. The tree suggested that I pick a few leaves for my altar. I did. I could still feel its power which helped me identify it among the other trees and 30-some years of changes in the layout. That feeling is the same I felt in the cave paintings of Dordogne, and at Chartres, in the crypts of certain European village churches, and at the mounds of Gamla Uppsala.

Around the base, I noticed some carefully arranged small twigs that reminded me of my little temples. It validated my heathen faith to realize that I was not the only one that tree called out to and rescued from the nightmare of playground life.