sandy smith | 5/26/2011
My alltime favorite thing has always been trees. I tried to draw them as a child and would get so absorbed in the detail of each branch and leaf that my drawings looked more like creatures. We had a big cedar tree in a patch of woods in the suburbs where I grew up and it was called the big ladder tree because it was so easy to climb high. A trip to the ladder tree to meditate in the clouds was called for several times each summer.
I always loved reading books under a tree. My favorite trees were in those books. They had elves in them and glittered silver in the twilight. The best forests and trees are described in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkein.
I learned about Linden trees - which are real and other giants like old Beeches and Tulips and Oaks hundreds of years and still growing. There were evil trees that could move and "get you". Trees that could talk if you knew how to listen. Anyone that skipped reading the details about the trees in these forests missed some of the best trees in the world. And the worst.
Read about them on a log in a forest where I read the scariest parts out loud to my children. They love trees now too. Great outdoorsmen start with great trees both real and imagined.