Meeting Trees

How the story opens...

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 before 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 laced 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 hay. Beyond the barn we entered the shadowy woods. Here and there light broke through where a tree had fallen and let in the sun.

Here and there light broke through where a tree had fallen and let in the sun.