At Three In A Tree

by Joyce
(Alberta)

I was born in Port Renfrew in 1965 and not long after I got the hang of walking upright, my parents started to notice my unusual attraction to a particular tree in the yard. There were a lot of the same trees around it but for some reason that tree was the one.

It was the best tree in the yard for climbing and swinging like a monkey! Dad said most of the Arbutus in the yard reached 80 feet tall and straight up, not a bend. Somehow the height of the thing didn't scare me to climb it....right to the tippy top!

It's still hard for me to believe that I was only 3 and able to climb a tree straight up like that! I would get to the top and start to sway back and forth and I would get that tree just swinging! I do remember hanging on so tight I would scrap my forearms when the tree would buck back and send me off into the opposite direction even faster. Can you imagine my parents shock when they first found me 80 feet up a tree laughing like a monkey?!

That feeling has never left me...I have my first memory of my dad in that tree...an aerial view of him on the ground with a chainsaw threatening to cut the tree down if I didn't come out of it...I came down out of the tree pretty darn fast...that chainsaw scared me...that day anyway.

They couldn't seem to keep me out of that tree. Mom said I would even insist on eating my lunch outside so I could sit under that tree. She jokingly says she thought I was possessed by the tree...always in it or under it...had to be around it. A lot of times I can remember refusing to come out of the tree until dad got home (with the chainsaw)!

Thankfully I never fell to the ground but just to be on the safe side my mom and dad decided the best course of action was to cut it down...IN FRONT OF ME!!! I had to witness the death of what had to be the greatest toy in the yard!

Yes I cried, and cried and cried about them cutting my favorite tree down...You'd think I would have just found another tree to climb but I guess that was the only one in the yard that I would climb to the top of, it was my favorite tree in the yard. Even after they cut it down I would still eat my lunch sitting on top of the trunk, pouting.