Treed

An experience even better than sky-watching from the ground is to do it while actually being way up IN a tree. And, the Wimberley treehouse provides the perfect setting. Here my sweetheart is pictured while spending some time up there reading.

For me, the coolest thing about sky-watching from the top of a tree is that I become part of the tree itself. That gentle swaying of the treetops when viewing them from the ground? The swaying became a downright spooky sensation when I first experienced it from way up there. After my fear receded and I realized that my life wasn't in immediate peril, it was invigorating. But it only receded after I could feel and move with the tree rather than fight it.

In the tree, my perspective on the world is different than that from the ground. The birds soaring above are much closer; sometimes buzzards swoop by so close to the treetops that I can hear their feathers rippling. The birds below don't seem to realize that I am up there, so I can study them as they dart back and forth to the feeder below. A sense of awe comes when I consider what those trees have had to withstand year after year, for hundreds of years. Even with mild winds, the twisting and creaking tell of huge forces the trees resist, and the would-be disasters that they put off. For as long as possible that is, until storms, erosion, disease, or their own size finally brings them down. Long after the treehouse is gone, hopefully...