Beneath The Willow

Green, beautiful, magical, tall, and safe. Full of grace, mystery...life. Trees. The most amazing of this world. The only place since I was a child where I have ever felt truly happy and completely free. There is no other place I would rather be then surrounded by trees.
As a child I remember running off at any chance, climbing trees and spending hours in them reading and dreaming. I was content. I felt safe as the long branches wrapped around me like arms. They held mystery and questions as I questioned to myself where the fairies lived and if they would mind that I'm climbing and hanging from their home.
Now as an adult, whenever I can find an escape I run to the woodline again and go in as deep as I can, hopping over streams, and from log to log, watching carefully to not run into any spider webs and listening for signs of snakes. I take the kids so that they can develop  the same love as I did, and we sit for hours searching through the stream for different rocks, and sometimes wading around while  I watch from the limbs of a tree above them.
It's where I go to think, to feel. To see things a little more clearly from other perspectives then mine. I go there sometimes to plan, plot, strengthen myself and stand a little straighter. It's where I go for a healing. The sound of the life around me revives me, wakens me, and brings out all my senses. The smells of the woods, sounds of the distant footsteps of some small animal or maybe a deer spying. It brings out the taste of the wind, and the feeling of the bark and moss under my fingertips. It allows me to see the world for all of the beauty that it holds. The wind whispers to me to thank God for being alive. Every bit of it reminds me that my true home is beneath the Willow. There my spirit will remain.