The Eagle Tree

by Ned Hayes

I believe in trees. I can touch them. And they have true names. They do not change in terms of what they are to me.

Perhaps it has no limbs on the lower extremities because it has no need for the rest of the forest at all. It is a solitary giant, circumspect in its height, removed from everything below.

She will just make a decision without me. That idea is very scary to me. My mother

I know what it is like to be a tree, pushed back and forth in the wind.

However, I do not like balls, and I am not particularly interested in feet, so I have never seen this other game

And they’d be just as still as a tree, and then I could understand them better.

Maybe the tree liked this; maybe it liked to have its roots alone on the forest floor. I did not know if this was intentional on the part of the Eagle Tree, but by clearing part of the forest it could grow without impediment.

What is it about this hilltop that grows out-of-region trees?

Trees do not require you to make certain sounds to be understood. They are simply present and ready for you to climb at any time. Trees are easier.

Time can be difficult for me. It is a continuous thing, and it has no boundaries. Sometimes it moves very fast and sometimes very slow.

Sometimes I think I am a tree, just located temporarily in a moving body, like one of the Ents from The Lord of the Rings, a book that my mother read to me before I could read for myself.

I think I have learned something about falling. It is not necessary to have a plan; sometimes you can simply act. This is an idea I can hold on to.

The waves don’t care—nature does not acknowledge human lines or meanings.

But I do not have anything that fades. All of what has happened to me remains in my head, like photographs or movies of the past; it is all precisely present in my head, and it never fades at all. Not even the edges of my memories fade.

I could see from how she acted toward her little dogs that she is not mean to them. Maybe she is only mean to people. Maybe that is what people think about me too.

I am a tree in the forest, moving very slowly, only barely touched by the wind. Everyone else just moves past me, and I watch them go, because I cannot be moved from who I am, and what I am, and what I know. It makes me special, unique. My knowledge is a secret that only I possess.

We are not truly—or only—individual people. It seems to me that we are like aspen groves. We are actually connected to one another underground, and must rely on one another for sustenance, and for the ability to continue to thrive in this world.

There is an ocean of light around us. We are surrounded by it. We swim in it. We move through it every day. But I am the only one who seems to have my eyes open. I am the only one who can see it. Sometimes, this is very lonely.

It is always curious to me that people do not remember conversations the way I do. For me it is an audio recorder in my head that I can turn off and turn back on.

The majority of who I really am is buried underneath the surface, and no one sees it.

I am always connected to the deep river of knowledge, my taproot sliding right into the river’s main spring. And these trees were trying to determine who I was from the little bit of me that they could see sticking up above the soil. It hardly seemed fair that they could judge all that I am from the little bit that they could see interacting with other people, because that’s the smallest part of who I am.

Human beings are also a carbon-based life-form. But if you burn us, you will not release as much carbon as when you burn a tree.

“The only thing I dislike about the article is that it called you ‘disabled,’ and that’s not an accurate description,” said my mother. “That’s not how I think of you. I wish the reporter had talked to us.”

“What’s wrong?” my mother said again and again. “What is wrong?” But I did not reply to her. I did not know any words.

in that moment, I could understand why some people like to look at each other’s faces. There is something in a person’s eyes that you cannot see anywhere else in the world. Something haunting and unsettling.

It is all right with me that the Eagle Tree fell down. That is a natural part of the tree’s life cycle. But I feel good that I was able to be with the tree when it happened. Maybe I am in love with the Eagle Tree, or maybe I was in love, before it fell down and died.