PICTURE 10 OWL IN HOLLOW TREE “ Hiccups! I knew you would come back. I have cut a heart shape hole in the barn door, and I made you a nest out of wood and straw. You can fly in and out at night and hunt for mice." the nice farmer said, smiling.
The farmer cared for the apple tree very much, always giving him water and surrounding him by the best compost in the state. As the chores were finished and the sky turned black, the oak tree looked up as a shooting star sliced through the sky. “I wish I would be treated better than the apple tree,” whispered the oak as the whole farm stood still for the night. The next morning the big oak tree woke to the farmer singing a cheerful tune while strolling to where the oak proudly stood. In the farmers arms were huge bags of mulch.
There was one old oak in particular that had a nook in the trunk with a soft bed of moss that you could curl yourself into and have a nice warm nap. A few trees held nests in their networks of leaves and branches, many with peeping newborn birds with their yellow mouths stretching open for the meals that their parents brought. The parents themselves were wonders to behold. There was the gentle robin, who you could always spot because of his red breast. The eagle would always roost in the tallest pine he could find.
Whenever the wind blew, it was snowing yellow, and I was covered with them. I would often doze off in that yellow blanket while the sunshine held my feet with her warm hands and the gentle breeze brushed my hair. In my dreams, I climbed that tree all the way up and reached the clouds--the white cotton candies. Carefree, worry free; my younger years... Everything seemed so beautiful in my eyes. Mother Nature was with me and she filled the absence of my real mother during my childhood; my daily life started with the satisfying weather and ended without complaints.
As I slowly made my up the steep and rocky path, I began to remember why I always enjoyed coming here. Summer after summer, the balmy smell lingered in the cool humid air, mixing with the scent of damp earth around me. Flowers were spread all across the luscious forest floor, leaving an enticing fragrance in their wake. Vines twisted up and around every tree, reaching magnificent heights and hiding parts of the fo... ... middle of paper ... ...e stress surrounding my journalism job in New York was not healthy, especially considering how many weeks I am into my pregnancy. The intensity of running around day after day, chasing news headline stories, has gotten overwhelming and extremely difficult to handle.
We met at our usual place, under an ancient soft maple ringed by the deadwood of a particularly violent spring. It stood alone on the shore of a clover field precisely halfway between Chicago and St. Louis. We often used the fallen branches for our campfires, and as I prepared to land I decided to gather some before Susie showed up. I touched down among the drowsy purple clover heads, absorbing the shock in my calves and thighs. I was hunting firewood when I saw her streaking in from the north.
I grew up in one of the many buildings in Pikeville admiring from my bedroom window the beauty of the mountains, always exploring with my eyes the forest or the meadows, looking for a clean and quiet place. And, I found one on a hill in the back of the town. It is about 100 feet square, it has seven old trees, wild flowers and a lot of bugs and ants during summer time. I used to go there to sit down on a rock and watch the town and my trees. There was a very old tree, a maple tree, with a huge trunk.
Squirrel hunting has long been an American tradition and a tradition that many hunters grew up with. Squirrel hunting has just the right amount of action to keep a young hunter interested and more often than not that young hunter will choose to pursue other game eventually. Squirrels are getting a break from hunters as more and more people are hunting deer and turkey or unfortunately not at all. I remember when opening day of squirrel season was almost like Christmas. I couldn't wait to walk the hardwood ridges and fencerows to hunt a few squirrels and it was as exciting to me then as any deer hunt could be.
My Grandfather’s Love As we neared the house I could see the front yard emerge amidst the hurricane-twisted pines that stood like sentinels guarding a castle. Pulling into the yard, I noticed that the grass looked like one of my great-grandmother's patchwork quilts. Old, but new in a way, shaded with varying hues of greens and browns seeming to be sewn together with sporadically mounted ant hills adjacent to a wondering dog's paw prints. We pulled into the driveway slowly as not to disturb dust that lay sleeping on the broken concrete. With my arm half hanging out of the window, I tried to catch the snowflake blossoms of the dogwood trees that danced on the gusts of wind like lovers at a ball.
A cornfield lay at my back along with the warm winter sunlight that touched my neck and warmed my entire body. A soybean field, or what remained of one anyhow, rested due east of my sheltered position. It provided the perfect opportunity for an unobstructed shot at a prized trophy. I leaned back into the cover of another small tree, shielding myself from the biting winter wind, and started to imagine myself becoming a man. At only twelve years of age, becoming a man was a difficult concept to grasp.