Entry Two: Sunday, January 25, 2015 10:00 AM

I’ve opted to lock Puss inside, hoping to be the only domesticated creature in the tree this time. Puss still joins me in the map of her paw prints tracing their way around our yard and into the neighbor’s. She must have been exploring the path of the deer who paid our neighborhood a visit last night. How strange to see the white tailed deer in suburbia, just feet from the neighbor’s door. We stood on our porch and watched her –a young female – for a few minutes. Despite my wish that she would crash through the neighbor’s living room, it doesn’t look like she did. For her sake, I’m glad.

I stand on the second to highest limb of the tree, and once again I examine the bark of the trunk in front of me. The texture of the bark is as I remember it, but in the gray light of morning I see layers I could not in the dying light of dusk: the gray elephant skin for an outer shell tinged darker by melting snow, the ashen brown where the shell has been picked away, and then the cherry color of raw exposed scabs. The flesh beneath has been torn into feathers almost like a paint brush. I imagine these wounds are scars of battle: wounds earned while trying to catch its brethren as they plummeted from above to the earth.

I place my hand up on top of the highest severed branch intending to swing myself up even higher just as I did two weeks ago. But I freeze. Not physically as today is a full five degrees warmer than last time. I even hear the soft thud of wet snow melting from the eves and landing on the pillowy ground. No, this time, I am gripped by the thought of what if I fall?

Did Kole ever wonder that?

I almost laugh. Kole wasn’t afraid of anything. If he fell off his pony, hardly a moment went by before he was hauling himself back on. Even as his quad was rolling, I guarantee he was thinking about getting back on it. Heat rushes into my face and salty tears blur my vision. I lower myself back onto the shortest stump in the center of the three branches. Even at that height of three feet, I am higher than the jump that rolled his quad. I lower myself onto my butt and shimmy myself so I am fully embraced by the braches: a knee on each of the ones in front of me, my back supported by the one behind me. The one that I couldn’t climb today. I won’t allow defeat to be the word of my visit to the tree. For Kole, I will try again next time.

For now, I listen to the caw of two crows talking back and forth. One I cannot see lies somewhere over my left shoulder beyond my house. The other stands at the very top of one of the lone trees in the neighbor’s yard. It used to have a mate directly beside it, one that held it and supported it for forty years or more. It was another casualty of the saw. This too-tall, too-skinny, too-alone tree sways precariously now. I wonder how long it will be able to exist without its mate. I look around at my own tree with its maimed bark, its split trunk, its missing limbs. Even with two crippled arms it holds me close – safe. That lone tree and my tree have something in common. Much was taken from them. They show their weakness in their sway and in their wounds, but in showing that weakness, they also show a strength to survive.

Entry One: Tuesday, January 13, 2015 6:00 pm

I place a hand on either side of the Y’d limbs of the tree, plant my boot in the crook, and hoist myself up onto the shortest stump, the pistil of the remaining boughs. Three feet from the ground, I perch just a moment, then readjust until I am seated on the base which has been sliced at a 30 degree angle. The three strong, reaching arms of the tree envelop me. Scratch that. One arm, two amputated, mangled limbs no more than seven or eight feet above my head.

Behind my closed eyes, I go back to that day when the neighbor unhinged the latch of our gate and turned a chainsaw on my beloved ash tree – the only tree that belonged to me – while I was away at work.

 I can’t undo what happened.

The sour sickness like past-date milk floods my stomach. Kole’s parents must think that very same thought every time they remember the day he rolled his quad – three days before the doctor pronounced him brain dead. Kole’s fate and the fate of my tree seem interlocked somehow. My tree, deemed a butchered, blemish on my property, is sentenced to removal. It is to be replaced with a more “appropriately sized” tree. Whether it’s next week or next month or not until spring, my tree has been given a looming, unavoidable death sentence. Now I sit with this tree for its remaining days on this Earth, much as Kole’s mother held his four-year-old body in the hospital gurney, while the painfully brief and achingly long last moments hurtled towards an imminent finale.

I contort myself within the confined space two or three feet between each of the three boughs which form a triangle around me. I turn to face the mangled limb that was to my back, the taller or the two amputees. I pause and rest my hand on the trunk. The bark is cold and dry beneath my fingers. Each piece is a scale, half an inch wide by two or three inches long. The ends and corners curl away from the tree as if stretching for room to breathe. The rivers between each scale show a hint of the naked more fragile skin beneath. I drag a finger along this crack. When I pull my hand away and rub my fingers together, I feel something dirty, almost gritty. Sawdust.

I’m suddenly gripped by the urge to climb higher. I reach above my head and grasp the serrated edge with bare hands. Splinters of wood puncture my skin like hairs of fiberglass. I use another nub that used to be a branch jutting off to the left side as a foothold and then I swing myself up and over. I’m surprised by the ease with which I swing almost 360 degrees around the bough, twelve inches in diameter, and slide into place on top of the severed arm.

A sound too soft to be rain but more audible than snow catches my ear. My gaze shoots up to the indigo sky but no precipitation falls. I listen closer, watching the cloud of breath burst from my mouth. The sound is coming from below. I peer towards the base of the tree. Climbing towards me is my cat. “What do you think you’re doing, Puss?” I ask.

She meows in response, What do you think you’re doing?

A smile tugs at my mouth. It must be strange for her to see the human who feeds her not only in her hunting ground, but firmly planted in the air. Maybe she didn't know I could even reach this spot.

I try to return my focus to the environment. Feel the 23 degrees raise the tiny hairs on my exposed hands and face, sniffle back the run from my nose, but the cat has different plans. Puss climbs into my lap, burying the tiny notepad and paper I brought beneath her. She proceeds to nuzzle me with her head cocked sideways and calling purrrrr-oww, raising the final syllable an octave.

Pet me.

I oblige. Her coat feels cool and smooth, like running a hand through water. I can feel that the spaces between each piece of fur have inflated with air to insulate her. She nuzzles her face against mine, then withdraws a few inches. Her eyes with pupils dilated black blink and seem to say, I know. I miss it too.