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CHAPTER 1
One summer day, my father and I were in the workshop making a stool for my grandmother. I measured the walnut board, my father sawed it, and both of us fitted the pieces together.
We had to wait for the glue to dry we could rub The stool with oil, so my father cocked an eyebrow at me and Said, "Scott, you reckon the trees are lonesome?"
I stared through the open door At the woods behind our house. "They look mighty lonesome to me," I answered.
"Then lace up your boots," my father said, "and let's walk."
Boots laces up, we hiked through the garden, where butterflies were flitting, then by the pasture, where ponies were munching grass, then past the barn, where owls and bats would be sleeping and mice would be scurrying in the bay.
Beyond the barn we entered The shadowy woods. Here and there Light broker through where a tree Had fallen and let in the sun. As we Passed through one patch of light. I looked up at my father and said. "You've got sawdust in you hair."
"That's what makes it curly," he said, raking fingers through his wavy red hair. My father often smelled of sawdust, because he loved working in his shop. He made my bed and dresser and desk, made treehouses and trucks.
We never hurried in the woods. "Trees don't rush about," My father liked to say, "so why should we?"
We moseyed along, taking our own sweet time. We stopped to listen for birds twittering, squirrels chattering, and wind whooshing among the leaves. We paused to look at crayfish and minnows flickering in the creek. Squatting down, we studied ferns and flowers and moss, and we smelled the rich dirt.
We stood for a spell watching a spider weave her web.
Then my father asked, "Do you see any beech trees?"
I glanced around until I spied a trunk with smooth gray bark like the skin of a hippo.
"There's one," I said.
"Right you are. Now how about a yellow popular?"
I squinted up until I saw pointy leaves shaped like tulips waving against the sky. "There!"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Meeting Trees"
by .
Copyright © 1997 Scott Russell Sanders.
Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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