The tree

Write everything you know about your favorite tree


Jolene lay, surrounded by rock and short grass, under an ancient tree; peering up through thick, wide needles and gnarled limbs that seemed to spiral up and up and up. The canopy of this tree was wide and glorious, spreading out in a maze of branches for birds to nest and perch upon. The web of branches were so thick that Jolene could hardly see the sky above, except through small pockets of light where she could see soft clouds and brilliant sunlight, streaking down through the branches and the needles.

Before she had lain down in the grass, her twin brother, Josef, had left her to go lay on the other side of the tree, but the trunk was so massive she could no longer see him at all.

She only knew he was there because she could feel the wonder in his thoughts, linked to hers across the distance.

“It seems so real,” Jolene heard his thoughts in her mind, “like I could actually touch it if I wanted!”

In reality, they weren’t anywhere near the tree, for they did not know where it stood, except within this memory. The memory had passed to Jolene from her mother, Shanidar, who had passed it to her daughter along with the ancestral memories that her mother had passed on to her when she had died. These ancestral memories were as old as the tree, and perhaps as difficult to follow as the gnarled maze of the branches twisting above. But the memory was as real and solid as was the tree, and one day Jolene knew that someone would find it, and would touch the tree as she now saw Josef touching it in her thoughts.