week 1

Outside on a bright sunny day. It's hot enough to cook eggs on the tar, but not humid at all. The grass is greener than I could imagine, the trees are in full bloom. Of course I don't pay all that much attention to the beauty around me, too engrossed in the life I live, and only ten years old. A backpack full of books slung over my shoulder, and headed for the best climbing tree I could find. Hiding from the world and trying to escape into my books is all I can think about. When I reach the rough bark of that old sturdy tree, I begin to pull myself up where my sister and cousins reside.

It's our favorite tree, and you can see so much from where we sit. There's red robins with brown bellies chirping, pecking at the ground and I wonder what they're pecking at. I see no worms where they stand, and the ground is dry enough for their search to be almost futile. What it would be like to be a bird is all I can think about as the breeze brushes across my face.

It's not long before school will be out and us children will all be forced to be outside all day every day. Of course, as long as this tree stands, it will be my place of residence while outside. Medium brown colored bark, rough, uneven, great for keeping your balance getting into the tree, sitting in it and climbing down. The grooves are low enough for even the youngest of us to be able to easily get up and down the tree.

The sky is the opposite of how I feel; blue, with bright white clouds and a sun so bright and warm I almost can't bear it. Squirrels and chipmunks run playfully around, while also being wary of everything around them. To me it seems they know the world can bring them danger at any time. Horses down the road graze calmly in their prison cells, seemingly pleased with their wherabouts. I wonder how they can seem so content in a world nothing like where they should be. I wonder if they communicate with each other about the good ol' days; the days back when animals roamed the lands free and wild. I wish I could rescue all animals and set them free somewhere no person would dream of trying to tame them.

I especially empathise with the food they have to eat; horses and their grains and hay, when they could be somewhere free and wild eating whatever the lands provide them with. Then I think about captive dogs, cats and birds and how the food they once loved and the land they roamed before people came along is so much more than any human could ever provide them with. Their primal instincts almost gone; all captive animals, how can humans ever think they are doing these animals a service?

So many people who care about these animals, but not once have I ever heard them talk about sending all animals back to their primal free and wild lands. Then there's zoo's; they save countless animals, but only to cage them in lands much smaller than the animals used to roam. I feel for these animals; I feel for the land we as mankind are destroying. We continue to multiply as the animals who used to be a much larger population are dwindling away.

So, yes, I sit here in this old bark oak tree with my sister and my cousins, and it's only when some strangers who know nothing about saving the land and the animals come and try to saw the branches of the tree we are currently sitting in. All of us children protest, but those young adults who know nothing about nature and preservation destroy our tree as we sit in it. Too young to save the tree, let alone the poor animals in captivity.