What was your favorite childhood tree? Mine was a lilac bush

I recently finished a wonderful memoir by scientist Hope Jahren. One of her many wise observations in Lab Girl is that everyone has a favorite tree from childhood. I share the author's sentiment, as I had a beloved tree in the backyard of my childhood home.

One of my favorite places to play when I was young was a lilac specimen. Dubbed a tree by me, because the remarkably overgrown shrub had limbs strong enough to support two boards that made up my two-story treehouse. My Dad had nailed in two small boards as foot holds on the most forward branches and then secured one rectangular board as the first floor and a second, bigger board, higher up and supported by many branches as the second floor of my treehouse. Using the smaller plank as my base, I could exit it quickly like a monkey, by reaching out to a sturdy branch, holding it tight, then swinging out from the its canopy and dropping easily to the ground.

The treehouse was the picture of minimalism composed of bare plywood planks and two-by-four remnants. I took few physical items with me in it, except books and blankets. I loved my lilac tree, especially in the spring, when its scent was so intoxicating. The top floor of my tree house was as long on its diagonal as I was tall, which allowed me to lie flat on my back and stretch out my legs and watch the birds fly and clouds float across the sky through the interlacing blossoms.

This special place was mine (likely a selective memory as I shared it with my sister and friends). There, I could daydream, imagine, and invent for hours, forgetting to eat, drink, and go to the bathroom. My imaginary world was so fertile and furtive. Often, I would pretend to be the characters in my books or conjure a melding of my life with theirs, inventing a scenario where we meet or intercept and our lives suddenly become intertwined like the branches of my overgrown lilac shrub.

Book recommendation

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren