The Tree

There once was a little brown tree. No matter how hard the wind blew it did not fall down. All the trees around it were different and much taller. It did not know what kind of tree it was. Where had it come from? What strong gust of wind had blown it to this spot... had it landed in the wrong place to make its home?

What good could a little tree be here? Its tiny leaves struggled to reach the tiny pockets of warm sun rays radiating through the dense foliage above. Almost unperceivable pin-hole beams of sustenance and hope. He often wondered if the bigger trees even knew he existed. Once in a while a squirrel would run up his base and tickle his thin bark, while playing chase, but he knew he had no nuts for him. There was nothing meaningful to take more than a moment to contemplate. He was just an occasional bouncing-off-place to get to a higher tree.

The nuts, which were raining down from above, bounced off his leaves, occasionally puncturing one. He longed to know what was above the trees, to feel something, the full force of the warmth, the source of his imagining and hope, something brighter and made out of nothing he had experienced yet... wonder...the unknown... something magical. There was a reason his branches reached upward -- he knew it, yet he didn't know why -- a window into what the taller trees felt.

He tried to ask the squirrels, but they never listened and talked to fast amongst themselves that he could not understand them. It always sounded as if they were laughing at him and guessing how much longer his little roots could grow before bumping into the family root system and communication web between all the bigger trees. If he could reach them than maybe he could talk to them! Maybe he could share the water and grow taller!

The air was growing colder and his leaves started falling. He shivered and he felt as if the first frost had turned him into an icicle. He was brittle and frozen. The larger trees' leaves began to fall on him and cover him. He could not move to shake them away. It was as though he was becoming a bush, not even a tree, but a shrub of all the leftover, dead parts, the bad parts, of all the greater more majestic trees. What good could he be now? He had no purpose and had landed in the wrong place. Somehow he had been separated from his brothers and sisters and taken by a rouge gale! Oh, what had he done to become such a failure of a tree?

When all hope was lost and the light of the moon created monsters of crooked and mutilated grotesque shadows around him, like strangling, clawing arms suffocating and closing in on him, the tiny winter bush, he heard a faint rustle from above as a cold wind shot through the trees and the a faint sound of something falling

The sound grew louder and suddenly his tiny branches, so close together as if like a glove or hand, caught the falling object. It was a tiny bird! He looked puzzled. He hadn't seen all the birds grow and flew far away to stay warm or build their own nests. He had never seen a bird fall before.

“Hello? Are you ok?” he asked.

The bird began to cry and replied, “I didn't want to leave the nest. I don't know how to fly. I don't know what a bird is supposed to do when they get bigger. My mommy left and I don't know if I am grown up yet! Now I am down here and I can't get back up!”

The little tree said, “I am sorry I cannot reach either. I was trying to become a tree but now I think I was meant to be a bush somewhere else.”

The bird nestled into the little tree’s leaves as he was caught in the branches. “Thank you for catching me. I think you are the warmest tree I have sat in. The leaves block the cold and it feels like a hug from a bird wing, like my mom used to do! I feel very safe,” he said. He spoke almost hesitantly, but also like a dam had opened up and the truth of his feelings rushed out of his beak without a choice. He needed to share that he felt kindred with the tree, who was someone who knew what it was like to feel out of place, like a failure because he was different.

“You don't mind that I don't have nuts or shiny apples, and that I am not tall?” the little tree questioned.

“Oh! No! You are the kindest tree I have met so far! No one listens to my song they all try to shrug me off. I like to be down low,” replied the bird.

The little tree said, “Maybe you could practice jumping from down here and I could help you learn to fly. Then you could adventure above the trees and tell me what you see. You could sing to me all the wonders you see and we could be the best of friends together!”

They were a misfit tree and a bird, together, as one soul -- accepted and free to be, just as they were -- special in each other's eyes, and one day their own eyes.