The Boy Who Loved a Tree (standard:drama, 1560 words)
Author: Robert G Moons	Added: Jun 24 2013	Views/Reads: 4757/2223	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A boy and his parents make regular rest stops on their way to the boy's grandparents. Over the course of several years, the boy learns about a maple tree, nature, and life. (Age 10+)

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

life. Only now, when I think about these flying seeds, am I amazed at 
how inventive nature can be. 

Later in the autumn, the leaves would start to fall, a sign winter was
fast approaching, and my favourite tree would soon go to sleep once 
more. I often collected a few of these colourful leaves as keepsakes, 
to be later placed in my Mom's scrapbook. 

One summer day, we found the tree with a few of its smaller branches
broken off and lying on the ground beneath it. It upset me, more than 
my parents' thought was normal. My Dad guessed the damage could have 
been caused by a storm, but didn't rule out vandalism. Why would anyone 
want to do this? (I remember thinking at the time). That was the 
beginning of the end of my ideal child's world. 

But it was a year later that the real world came into too sharp of a
focus. It was the middle of a dry, hot summer. I was eight years old by 
this time. We approached the rest stop like we had done so many times 
before, but this time something was different. There had been a forest 
fire; a section of the forest had been disfigured into black and grey 
ashes. The smell of burnt trees still lingered in the air. My maple 
tree! I ran toward what used to be a magnificent tree. It was now 
nothing more than a blackened husk, no branches left, and at a fraction 
of its original height. One look told me it was dead and beyond any 
hope of saving. 

My Dad noticed a caretaker outside the rest stop's building, emptying a
trash container. He walked over and had a brief conversation with the 
older man. When my Dad came back, he told us what the caretaker told 
him. It seems someone had failed to extinguish a campfire properly and 
the embers, taken by the wind, ignited the dry grasses and brush. 
Luckily, the winds had blown the fire toward the outer edge of the 
forest and not toward its centre. The firefighters had been able to 
contain it and keep it from spreading. That day, I cried the rest of 
the way to my grandparent's house. 

Things were never the same at the rest stop after that. Every time we
stopped there, I thought about that majestic tree and how much I missed 
sitting on its branches. A burnt stump was all that remained, like a 
grave marker, to indicate where the tree had once thrived for so many 
years prior. We changed our picnic table seating to one nearer to the 
rest stop's building. The 20-minute stops now seemed much longer. Weeks 
passed. One day, at home, I was looking through my toy chest when I 
spotted a small, plastic bag filled with the maple tree's seeds, the 
tiny helicopters. It was late autumn. Looking back at it now, I really 
didn't know what I was doing. I took the seeds, went out onto our large 
backyard, and planted about a dozen of the seeds evenly over a large 
area. I placed a Popsicle stick at each of the locations and checked 
them, every week, for signs of growth. Nothing. 

The winter came and went. I had all but given up hope on the maple tree
seeds. I assumed they died in the bitter cold during the long winter. I 
rarely even went out in the backyard anymore, but I decided to have one 
last look at the frozen to death seeds. Maybe I would dig them up, if 
for no other reason, than to see what had happened to them. 

I went out onto our backyard, walked over to where I had planted them –
to my surprise and delight, there were five tiny maple trees growing! 
They looked more like small branches with a few tiny leaves. I had 
never seen young maple trees before. I sat down beside the smallest of 
the five, gently touched its dainty, new leaves and softly said, 
“Hello, little baby maple tree. My name is Eric. Welcome to the world. 
I knew your mother; she was a very good friend of mine.” 

The End. 

Copyright 2013 Robert G. Moons 

My Website: https://sites.google.com/site/chroniclesofzvaxin 

My other fiction is available at smashwords.com or at my above website
in PDF format with cover art. 

This work of fiction is the sole property and copyright of Robert G.
Moons. Please do not print or use without permission of the author. ALL 
RIGHTS RESERVED. 


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