Tree Lounge

I mentioned yesterday that I had participated in a charity walk/run event. Because it so closely followed the Toastmasters event that day and because it went all night long, I tried to work on possible ideas for this blog as I walked. Consequently, ideas tended to spring from things I was looking at. One such idea was neatly summed up in a single word: trees. As it worked out, I wrote about the only thing that I could think of as I was in fatigue-driven mental free-fall. That one thing was of course the fundraiser itself.

 Hours later, I was recovered enough to both remember and intelligently develop some of those other ideas. I'll say a few words now about trees. My personal favorite is the Ponderosa Pine, owing to my experiences in the cool upper altitudes of northern Arizona. The aforementioned tree has the lovely scent of vanilla, if not its flavor upon consumption. That smell, incidentally, is potent enough to cover up the putrid odor of an outhouse, which we all appreciated at summer camp there. Yes, I definitely favor pines.

 We used to go out and get a real tree for Christmas, and I suppose those must have been firs some some such thing. We of course had to give up real trees when they began to provoke allergic reactions. It was always a funny thing to me that you would chop down a tree and then assiduously endeavor to keep it from decaying by propping it up in a pot of water. It was a really precarious arrangement justified only by the greater legitimacy possessed by a real tree and lacking in a plastic one. It was terrible trying to keep the area tidy with the tree rapidly deteriorating as it did.

 I wish I knew more about trees. I ought to know plenty considering I was in Boy Scouts and even work in a summer camp nature lodge. I always managed to know enough to adequately discharge my duties, and the knowledge all abandoned me the moment it was no longer essential to my survival. I'd love to get back what I knew about the natural world, but I'm all to busy learning what I need to know in order to survive now. It's a fact that making my way in the world is just not likely to depend on what I know about the Coyote Willow ever again.