New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Oh To Be the Top of a Tree!

Thursday 07/24/2014

Whenever I can, I get outside, even if housebound with work or duties. I can check and even answer many emails on my phone and certainly participate in conference calls from my perch on my front or back deck. It's a matter of staying connected to the outside world as much as I can. My daughter compares me to the turtles she spots sunning on some sunlit rock.

While doing so lately I've been paying attention to the top of the trees that tower over my property boundry front and back. To the back and just beyond the line of maples and cherries that line the old RR bed that happens to be my back yard is a grove of towering white pines. Out front it is the roadside line of white and red oaks that stencil in my eastern view.

This afternoon I dwelt a while on how it must feel to be the top of a tree. Looming above all and looking down at me. Earth bound I could not sense the breeze that swayed my alter ego to and fro. How wonderful it must be to be cooled by such a breeze on a hot afternoon that had me sweating so. And there are the branches and leaves that will be warmed by the sun's first morning glow while I will shuffle about on the way back from my paper box for the shaft of sun dodging its grasp. And then at day's end it is these same limbs I envy as the shadows creep below bathing only them in the last of the day's golden glow. Oh to be the very top of a tree.