When I sat in a tree and dangled my legs they seemed longer and could reach anywhere.
Mine did.
My legs could reach all the way to the ends of the earth.
I would wander next door into the Halgreen’s yard and climb a tree – I had a favorite tree – and dangle my feet from my branch and I’d see lines, like lines on a map. They’d come out the ends of each of my toes and race at high speed all the way through the vast expanse of surrounding trees and then leave the Halgreen yard and go into all the world. Some ran aground on the rocks of the uneasy coast-lines and were lost in the aggressive ebb and flow of pounding waves off Cape Horn. Others staggered slowly, as if they were hot and tired and thirsty into white-sand deserts and got buried and scorched, until they got a second breath and rose to the surface and burned like a firework fuse and continued their journey into the shifting haze of noon heat.
When I sat in my tree pointing my toes through Africa and beyond — this way to the Cape and the South Pole, stretching and pointing behind myself, straining my neck and my leg muscles — and that way, behind me, to the Sahara and the North Pole — the world was mine. I was connected to it. I could point to the opposite ends of the earth at the same time with each foot while my warm and soft heels touched each other like companions linked for an exciting adventure. My lines raced over the cliffs and through rocks and, ran under the oceans, inter-continental telephone lines, delivering voices to distant countries and ran up beaches and criss-crossed places like England and North America and Iceland, all from the ends of my curved bare feet.
My legs, locked at the knees, often became binoculars. I’d swing them higher and higher, searching Africa and the rest of the planet. One eye closed, using my big toes as view-finders, I could see to the end of our vast continent, deserts in the north, jungles in the middle, valleys in the south, beaches around the edges. Colors of bright days turned to night, vivid sunsets became hazy mornings and smells of foods and flowers and the sounds of music and voices rushed up my legs into my belly and from the insides of my being and warmed my heart. The Halgreen’s backyard forest gave me the continents and the continents danced in my heart. If I stood on the branch I could see all the way to our new brick house and, anytime I wanted, I could slip off the branch, leave my lines where they were and land on the rich, red and cool damp soil, and run home.
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