I ended up climbing a tree while my friends were visiting – a tree perfect for climbing, horizontal and with a trunk almost flat over the water. My friend ended up climbing way high into the tree, while I stayed back, looking at the roots and the water pooling around the edge.

I started to wonder who else had sat in the tree, what pairs of students, which professors. I wondered if any famous writers had ever sat in this tree. I hadn’t ever really paid attention to it–I always just walked past on the way to my sit spot.

I wonder whether there was a student that would ever come by the tree and sit. Whether they would sit while the leaves were green and sunlight would still spill over the lake and there would be geese and ducks and flowers floating over the lake. Then fall would arrive. The leaves would yellow and spill over the water. The students’ legs would swing over the trunk over reflected water, the sky becoming more clear in the reflection with every passing day.

Maybe a solitary swan would waddle past. Maybe the ducks and birds would disappear. The rains would sweep over, hail would hit. Then the seasons would warm and the reflection of the sky in the lake would be filled with buds and pink flowers and nests. The student kicking their legs would be surrounded by a sea of green.

The cycle would repeat for three years, and then the student would disappear. And then the branches would grow longer and dip into the water.

 

(an image from a night at Worcester College, in the winter, when we saw the largest moon halo any of us had ever seen)