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.