When I was fourteen years old, my mother took me up into the mountains to visit my godmother. I hadn’t seen her in ten years, barely remembered the house she was living in and had no idea she had two children.
Ever since I was a child I was fascinated with trees. I need it to climb them, talk to them and feel them.They were my best friends and the only ones privileged to hear my true feelings and thoughts. Now, for me to accept going to my godmother’s house, my mom had to tell me that they had a beautiful orchard and lots of trees to climb. She didn’t lie, the trees were there, waiting for me to conquer them. I tried them all, the apple trees were my favorite, and such good chairs to sit on and read; the cherry tree had a rough personality, always causing me trouble and trying to push me off his branches; the pear tree was the sweetest; comfortable as an armchair, my dreamy pall with which I used to take long trips around the world. But there was one, an enormous tree, that offered the most amazing shade over the house and the backyard: a walnut tree. He couldn’t be climbed, I was told; many have tried all of them failed. Nobody knew its exact age, but its leaves have seen some of the family members hung by the branches. I spent years and years trying to prove them wrong, but everything failed, without any tools the tree was impossible to climb. So, a wish was born into my head: I wanted to build myself a tree house in that walnut; a house where I could read, look over the entire yard and house, send smiles to my pear tree friend and dream dreams unknown to other humans.
Never happened and I am sure it’s never going to. Still, from time to time, I remember that walnut tree and I miss him like crazy. A tree that has seen it all, a tree that will probably never die, a tree to which I owe so many shady afternoons. Today is one of those days, when I remember it and I would run to its majestic crown, looking up and admiring it for hours.
