A tree. A Pin Oak tree. Fairly big and growing right through the middle of the path. It doesn't have any leaves but looks like it's trying to grow some. That's weird because on the farm, we had plenty of Pin Oak trees but they rarely lost ALL of their leaves during the fall. The trunk is large around but small enough that I could get my arms around it. the trunk is large at the bottom but narrows considerably toward the top and many small branches stem from it.

Pin Oak trees is a fun memory for me but bittersweet. I was a climber and would love to climb up the tree by hugging it and moving my bare feet. I would then climb to the nearest branches, and use them as ladder rungs to climb higher. At first it was to get cats down that were chased up there by the dogs. But then I realized how much of a safe haven it was for me. No one could get me up there. Pretty soon, I had my favorite trees that I liked to climb. One of them had three branches that went out from the trunk in a fashion that I could recline among them. The bottom branch was the part I sat on and the arms were the other two branches. I slept up there many times listening to the sound of the leaves. My mother found out about me climbing the trees and claimed that I could ruin the trees growth if I kept climbing them. I actually believed her. I know better now that they would have grown either way.

There were many places that I "hid" on the farm to just be myself and to be accepted as myself. Many of the places that I found became off limits for some reason or another. To lay in the barn with the cats because she said I'd get lice. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized that it's not that common for a human to get cat lice. Same thing with the trees. Somehow I'd ruin the tree. I searched for places that I felt that I belonged. On the farm it was cats, trees, and cows.