Kokoro, the name of the camp I witnessed unfolding before me this past weekend, means that: Indomitable spirit/heart. Watching the men -- and one female -- push themselves through the "crucible" of 50 hours of essentially non-stop physical activity was enormously inspiring and an incredible thing to witness. It forces you to r unleash a strength and power you may not even be aware you have until you reach for it.
I'm not even sure I can put into words exactly what I saw and felt; it's something like trying to describe a terrible and beautiful storm you watch from the edges.
I've been considering for some time now going through it myself, and my thought was seeing it happen would push me in one direction or the other, and it did. Truthfully? I always knew what direction I would go. I just needed to see it to take it. So next year, likely in August or September, I will be going through it myself.
And I can't wait!
Yes, there's a part of me that's utterly terrified by the idea -- the part of me that is thinking no no too scary can't don't bad stupid what-are-you-thinking-are-you-freaking-insane back out renig no don't don't don't -- but the larger part of me is the one that wrote the sentence for the above one-liner paragraph.
It reminds me of when the date I was to ship out for the Air Force began looming over me. I was so excited, and I knew it fit perfectly and as right as Italian leather shoes made precisely for my feet...but I had the same no no too scary can't don't bad stupid what-are-you-thinking-are-you-freaking-insane back out renig no don't don't don't thoughts -- to the point where I even started trying to come up with ways to cancel my enlistment.
But, really -- those thoughts, as these are now, were half-hearted. They really held no power over me and when I tried to lean in that direction, it rankled me. Yes, when I got there I was homesick and miserable and frustrated most of the time because I felt like the TI was always picking on me harshly (he told me upon graduation that he did so because he saw I had a lot of potential)...but I loved it, even if I didn't know at the time that I did.
I emailed my coach, Brad, last night and told him my decision -- because I knew he'd be excited to hear it, and because I knew I couldn't back out at that point. And today I bought boots to start breaking in. Appropriately, and cool as hell, they're official US Navy SEAL combat boots. What could be cooler than that?
Brad -- and the other coaches -- kept nudging me gently all weekend about going through. No pressure, but from a perspective they thought I could do it. One of them told me I had the personality to make it through. I found that very flattering. Between that, and the incredible inspiration pouring out from the students, there really was no other answer for me.
The other thing was that, as I watched, I realized I wanted to be a coach for it; to do so, you have to have gone through it (of course). I think it would be an enormous boon to the camp to have a female coach, and, too -- that way I can somehow start advocating in a more truthful way for more women to go through. The whole thing spoke to me in an incredibly deep way -- as a life coach and as a big sister. I believed in what Mark Divine was doing from the moment I stumbled across his SEALFIT website and I clicked on the Academies tab and first discovered Kokoro. Which was the first moment I felt a resounding yes! in my gut.
Colin, the fellow I sponsored, did splendidly, and he told me I'd made a dream of his come true; he'd wanted to do Kokoro ever since he saw it, and I helped him realize he did, after all, have a "warrior spirit" in him (I knew he had it in him, which was one reason I offered him the sponsorship), which finalized his decision to enlist in the Navy and become a SEAL.
I've also spoken to Mary, the female who barreled through it with fire and power (earning her the "Fire in the Belly" award) via email a few times, and she's echoing what Colin has been saying -- that they feel like they can take on the world and that there's nothing they can't do. She wants to go into the Navy and work in a support position for the SEALs as a trauma surgeon. Truthfully? I think she could easily be the first female SEAL -- and kick total butt -- if it were possible at this time.
And experience like that is something they may never be able to put into words. Whatever the paths Mary, Colin and the rest of the graduates take, I know they're going to do marvelously.
Congratulations to Kokoro Class 21! I can't wait for April and Class 22, and for graduation of Class 31 or 32!
Mike Ostrolenk (intern coach), Me, Jeff Grant (intern coach), Brad McLeod (the fellow with the evil chuckle, as mentioned in my previous post!). February 24, 2012 (also Brad's birthday!)
Me, Colin, Brad (repost from previous blog entry.)
Note: I was asked to take down the links to the photos for ownership reasons, which makes total sense. That's why the links are no longer in this post.
I will post a longer description of the weekend later (see previous post), but right now I'm still kind of having it all sink in. If I'm having trouble, I know the graduates of the camp are. It was so incredibly awesome I'm going to have to let it digest for a bit so I can put it into words. Met terrific people, watched the studends to amazing things mentally and physically, and came away very, very inspired. Met some terrific people and I can't wait for April!
I came away wanting to be a Kokoro (the camp's name) coach...to do so I'll have to go through it myself. (I'd also like to recruite more women to go through, and to do that I'd also have to have gone through it). There was one female who did at this camp, and she was amazing (only the fourth woman to complete it).
All of students were, as was Colin McLafferty, the fellow I sponsored. (At the conclusion -- immediately after the class was secured! -- to stay in the CrossFit open games he did another WOD -- workout of the day -- to post a score and stay in. Enormously impressive).
Sunday night, after it was all over, I did something I haven't done since college (none of us had, actually); my rental Hundai takes four passengers and me, a total of five. Yet we stuffed six of us in there (five coaches, including Brad -- my coach and who is also a Kokoro coach, and me) and drove to a movie (Act of Valor). Not my personal first choice, but when you're outnumbered by 5 to one you have to go with the majority. It was a decent enough movie and loads of fun all around because of the company.
I gave Brad and Mike (another coach) a ride to the airport yesterday morning. I mentioned that I'm now really leaning towards a yes of going (I kind of always have, ever since I saw the videos of Kokoro), and Brad was quite pleased to hear that.
"But," I said, "the problem now is that it's like having a bunch of friends convince you to join a fraternity and you do...which makes the hazing that much more intense."
Brad then let out the most evil chuckle I think I've ever heard from anyone....Oh dear!
You can either click on the first picture/video and go through one-by-one, or just pick random ones. In the upper right corner of the field with all the pictures, you'll see a small slider bar; if you slide the dot all the way to the right, that will enlarge the thumbnails if they're too small for you.
Me, Colin McLafferty (the fellow I sponsored) and Brad McLeod, my coach.
Many of you on my blog list know that my beloved grandmother died this past July on the 7th, 4 days after my 40th birthday. I was left some money, and I knew I wanted to do something with part of it that would go outwards, rather than all inwards. I considered a charity such as The Wounded Warrior Foundation which puts its funds towards helping soldiers wounded in the line of duty, or the Lone Survivor Foundation -- a similar foundation that was founded by Marcus Luttrell, the only SEAL to survive what was, until this past August's shoot down of the Chinook in Afghanistan, the largest loss of SEALs in a single operation (Operation Red Wings).
Both are excellent foundations, but it didn't feel like the donation would go far enough. And then I knew what I wanted to do.
A few years ago, I was poking around online doing research (I was starting to look for alternative fitness ideas that went beyond the normal gym routines), and I came across a website for something called SEALFIT (this was prior to my getting into CrossFit). It's run by a man named Mark Divine, a former Navy SEAL, for his SEALFIT gym and academies in Encinitas, CA. The SEALFIT gym is much like CrossFit (he also runs US CrossFit from the same facility), just geared more towards training special forces candidates and people looking for workouts a notch harder than CrossFit ones (yes...there is something harder!)
What really intrigued me were his academies which are structured to provide military-oriented training to anyone...not to become a soldier, necessarily (many graduates do, but it's also for the "everyman", too.)
The one academy he has that utterly fascinated me is called Kokoro.
It's a 50-hour camp that goes for, well, 50 hours straight. It's based
off the SEAL Hell Week training where the candidates stay awake for
about 5 days straight and get pretty much no sleep...or at least nothing
of real consequence. I thought the concept of having a workshop, for
lack of a better word, was enormously cool.
Looking at it from the point of view of having been in the military and having worked as a life coach for many years -- as well as from the aspect of doing really hard personal work -- I knew exactly what it was that Mark Divine wanted to do with the camp -- to provide an experience that would help you dig way down into yourself, crack open all preconceived ideas of what you think you can or can't do, and discover that you're infinitely more capable than you thought you were. Which is exactly what I try to do with my clients every day at work. In a cliche -- it's about trusting your belief in yourself.
As I watched the videos, I kept thinking how cool it would be to get to watch the camp unfold in person -- not necessarily by taking part in it (though there's a part of me that keeps considering it). But how on Earth would I ever get to just watch from the stands? And, yet, I kept thinking, Wow...it would sure be cool to watch it happen -- !
And so when I began considering what I wanted to do with some of the money I knew I wanted to sponsor someone through the camp. The way I saw it, I would firstly get to see where my money was going (which felt important), and, secondly, it would spread out beyond a PayPal payment. It wouldn't just be something for the person I sponsored, it would also help Mark Divine's business and everyone involved with it. It felt like I would get five or ten times more for each dollar.
Brad McCleod, the former SEAL from whom I've been getting training since last July (via email; he sends workouts, I do them and report my scores back) is a coach at Kokoro. But what's funny is that I knew about SEALFIT and Kokoro before I even knew Brad existed.
Well, that's kind of not true.
I did read all the bios of all the coaches when I first came across the camp, and it wasn't until after I began working with Brad when I reread them that I remembered reading his; what had stuck out was that he'd gone through BUD/S (SEAL boot camp) twice. Including Hell Week...twice. My thought was that anyone who could do that would be one cool dude to know. (I also remember thinking that Mark Divine would be a neat guy to meet and know, too).
Rolling back to my original research that led me to the SEALFIT site, I'd begun thinking that it would be really neat to get fitness training from a Navy SEAL, given how fitness-oriented they are -- and I knew it would be a push. But how? That I didn't know. Rolling forward to last May when I joined my CrossFit gym my thought was, "Well, maybe I'll meet one through CrossFit, given how military-oriented it is...."
I then began scouring Facebook for any CrossFit-oriented group or page that sounded interesting. One I came to was called "SEAL Grinder PT", which then led me to Brad McLeod's website (yes, the same Brad McLeod whose bio made me think, "Gee, he'd be a cool guy to know!"). Great stuff. Good articles and workouts that left my eyeballs reeling (I'm proud to say that they now sound doable, as do the workouts on the SEALFIT site...though I'd still have to scale them). I noticed he had an ebook about learning how to do pull-ups, and, given the equally-eyeball reeling number of pull-ups you do in CrossFit...and the fact I could do nary a one...I bought it.
I did notice on his site and in his book that he offered personal coaching. Too bad, I thought, since he's out of Atlanta and I'm in Portland. But what wasn't clicking, even though I read the damn offer several times, was that it was done by email. And still I kept thinking, "Gee, I'd sure like to get training from a Navy SEAL...." And then, all of a sudden, the dim bulb in my head got suddenly brighter as it hit me that, ta daaaaaa! here was exactly what I wanted. Just wasn't local.
(When I thought that, I remember hearing the answer back in my head, "Heather, you never specified local...you just said you wanted training from a Navy SEAL. "..............Uh, well...true.)
I've had a marvelous time working with him, and, I immediately started hoping there would be a way I could meet him in person. But how, I had no idea given our relative distance from each other.
I still hadn't made the connection, though, about how I'd read his bio quite some time prior, even he left for Encinitas to coach at a Kokoro camp a few weeks after I signed up with him. It wasn't until around that time -- maybe a little later -- when I reread the bios for the coaches that it clicked.
When I received the money, I emailed Brad and told him I knew he trained a lot of men who wanted to either become a SEAL or go into some form of special forces -- as well as men who just wanted to push themselves further (Brad does have a few other women on "Team SGPT" as he calls us, but we're definitely the minority). I said I also knew that many of them wanted to go through Kokoro, but didn't because of finances. Because I knew what it was like to really want to do something but have more dust and moths fluttering out of my wallet than cash, I told him I wanted to sponsor someone. Did he know of anyone?
He wrote back utterly amazed by my offer and said he didn't know of someone offhand, and really couldn't say anyway because he was a coach at Kokoro (which made sense)...but he would think of something. The idea he came up with was that the people who wanted to be considered needed to post a video explaining why they should be considered. (One fellow wrote an essay instead).
I watched each video and took notes about what they said, and then, anonymously, through a special GMail account I created, I interviewed each candidate. My questions were not easy, and were geared towards having them dig really deep and were exactly the kind I'd ask clients at work. I wanted to know if they "got" the experience and if they would be committed to it. Thankfully only six people applied; had there been more I think I would have crumbled. (One fellow later told me that, because of the kinds of questions I asked, he thought I was either an active duty or former SEAL!)
They were all excellent, and after thinking long and hard, I decided to make it so each person got a prize; I ended up offering two partial scholarships, three full (I was going to go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks this winter, but I decided to use that money towards another full scholarship), one nearly-full one; that fellow had already started making payments so I paid off his balance.
When I announced the winners, Brad asked me, via email, if I would be going to "all" of the camps -- he certainly would be! I replied that was wholly up to Mark Divine, given it was his show...just because I was paying for the candidate and just because the guys wanted me to be there for them it didn't mean I had the "right" to be there, and that while I would dearly love to be there, I would likely be in the way and I would have to be content with his picture feed.
"Oh no," Brad wrote back, "I can make sure you get a behind the scenes look!"
I thanked him, but I really didn't expect the answer to be yes. To my great surprise, Christine, the manager of SEALFIT and the one with whom I arranged the payments, told me I would absolutely get to come down and watch. I was floored. And not only that -- I could stay on site with the coaches! But since each guy -- the woman hasn't yet signed up for a camp -- chose a different camp, I wasn't sure how fair it would be to go to one but not the others; to me, it felt like I was picking a favorite.
Not a problem, Christine said, I could absolutely come down for the others and, at the very least, touch base throughout the weekend to check in on the camp. That actually made me speechless. And for anyone who knows me, that's a rare occurrence.
The first camp will be this coming weekend, so I'll fly down on Thursday, February 23 and come back on Monday, February 27. (I'll also take Tuesday off so I can decompress). I'll be giving Brad a ride from the airport, so I'll have some time to talk to him before he hits SEALFIT soil and goes into uber-coach mode.
I've been in email contact with Christine, and one of the things I did recently was tell her to please put me to work when I'm there; that way I won't feel like I'm underfoot. If I'm going to mill about, I may as well mill about with a purpose. She said that was awfully kind of me...and I may regret asking; she definitely would need help with the BBQ at the conclusion of the camp. Upon telling him of my offer, Brad answered that I would certainly be able to help with the food throughout the weekend.
As Andrew, my brother said (in jest), I can't imagine why they'd need help with food throughout the weekend....Ha!
I am unbelievably excited. I can't wait to meet Colin, the fellow who's going through the February camp, Brad, Christine and Mark Divine. And it's going to be so much fun staying in the "condo" with the coaches. I did email Brad and ask him if that would definitely be okay -- meaning, would, as I put it a "cog o' estrogen" get in the way of the "wheels of testosterone" -- ?
No, he replied; if I'd been given permission to stay at the condo it would be great if I did. (I was going to stay at a motel up the street).
As I said to a friend at work, "It's going to be the most bizarre "slumber party" I've ever had in my life!"
I'll most likely have to stay at the motel for the other camps (April, late June -- which butts up against my birthday -- July and August), but that's okay.
So this Thursday I leave gloomy, soggy, gray skies behind for sunny SoCal weather and beaches where the nighttime lows are Portland's daytime highs.
Funny how it all works out. Talk about serindipity! But, I guess,
too, it's also about putting out there what you want and then following
the little breadcrumbs that get left out for you, even if you don't
realize that's what you're doing.
1) Getting training from a Navy SEAL ✔
2) Meeting said trainer who is also happens cool dude who went through BUD/S twice that you thought would be neat to know ✔
3) Getting to see Kokoro unfold without having to participate ✔
4) Getting to meet Mark Divine, founder of SEALFIT and Kokoro ✔
All exactly as I wanted!
Here's a great video about the whole Kokoro experience:
We had the most beautiful, charming, perfect climbing tree in the side yard of my childhood home.
This tree was a very tall evergreen, that grew next to our house – it was huge, the tree. You got to the lower branches by climbing up a wooden compost box. In the spring, the box and tree was surrounded by a sea of daffodils I always loved to cut, marveling that the stems always made little squeaky noises when I snipped them. We mostly had oak trees in our yard and neighborhood, which you could climb – but not as well as you could this tree, which rose up well beyond any other tree in the surrounding neighborhood.
Tall and full, and a perfect shady spot within the branches on hot summer days. It was a favorite spot with the neighborhood kids, too. I spent many an hour in that tree reading and/or munching on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, listening to the wind hissing through the needles and watching all the different bugs climb up it, going about their little lives. I also loved popping the sap bubbles in the skin of the bark – the bigger, the better. The stickier you were when you came down from the tree, the better.
For some reason, I always thought of the tree as "Edward" in my head, despite the fact he was actually a "Douglas", our state tree, actually.
I could never quite get myself to climb up past a certain point, as it was where the wind would grab the tree and make it rock back and forth; even my more daring friends in the neighborhood – like the boys – didn't like going up much higher, either, for the same reason...Edward was a very tall tree, and he was very peaceful -- but it didn't quell the fear that snaked into me at that invisible line.
But I always felt angry with myself for being scared. My fear was that I'd fall – except I knew I wouldn't because the branches were so dense. It was also very wavy – even on days when there was almost no wind on the ground. But I'd always get to the one spot and feel like I absolutely could not go any higher.
Then, one day, one pretty, summer day with a turquoise sky puffed here and there with cotton ball clouds, I sat at that same place trying to will myself to go higher. I felt like a baby, a wuss. Like I was a total and complete chicken. It didn't matter that nobody else had. We always taunted each other about that, but nobody seemed willing to go much higher.
I'd spent much of the afternoon woven into the branches, reading. Probably a Nancy Drew mystery or, at least some book I'd gotten from the library (I was perhaps 11 or, at the most 12). I felt the top of the tree beckoning me as it always did, and I sat, staring up through the branches, looking at the sunshine sparkling down through the needles.
I always had the sense that Edward was making a promise he wouldn't drop me...but I still stayed afraid of the height and the possibility I might fall, somehow missing all the branches and plummeting straight to the ground. Of course that wouldn't happen...but there was a first time for everything.
But that afternoon as I stared upwards, I started thinking that maybe – just maybe – I could do it. So I stood and climbed up a few more feet. The wind picked up and Edward rocked back and forth, creaking and whispering. My breath caught, but I climbed up a few more branches.
I got up maybe another five feet and looked down; the compost box looked very far away and small in my distorted perspective mind; to me, in that moment, it was no bigger than a child's toy boxcar for an electric train. The wind pushed at the tree again, and again Edward creaked and whispered. I climbed a little higher, noticing the branches were getting smaller. Would they support my weight? Of course they would. But...but what if they didn't? What if I actually misjudged them – ?
I looked up; swaying back and forth it almost looked like Edward was waving at the clear sun above, which danced over the iridescence of the bark and caught the crystallized, dried sap. Ants and bugs crawled along, like people hurrying down a busy city street, minds focused on their individual tasks. It was like that, I thought – a little city. The tree was full of compartments and tiny burrows which acted like little apartments and homes, in the branches and trunk – all the way from the top to well down into the earth and roots.
I'd seen bird's nests, too, which were often above the "safety line". We always left them alone, but there were a few springs when they were low enough where we could, from a safe side of the tree, peer into a nest and watch the little eggs and babies, much like we got to do when a robin built a nest in the bush outside of my brother's window.
A larger gust of wind, louder creaking and shushing. It was as if Edward was testing me, coaxing me. Fear twinged in me, making my stomach go cold and my heart leap into my throat, rapping at it as if on fast-forward.
Maybe, I thought, this was high enough. I was already higher than I'd gone before...so maybe I could go in steps – ?
Big puff of breeze, big creaking, big hissing of the wind through the branches and needles. I don't know if Edward was encouraging or chastising – or both.
No, I thought, I'm not a baby anymore. I can do this.
I climbed a little higher, my path a bit harder to navigate as the branches were narrower and thicker. My hands and the bottoms of my bare feet were dotted and smeared with sap, as were my legs and clothes. I had taken my time climbing, and the sun had arced further to the right, warm on my face, scented with pine and freshness.
The bending and swaying was far more pronounced by now, and I was well past the "safety line". I looked over to my left at the sound of voices, and saw friends playing in the street (we lived on a triad of cul-de-sacs). They were far below, and I willed them to look up and see me, but they didn't. Even if they had looked up, I would have been hidden by the branches.
I looked up again, and I was still a good ways from the top. By now I could see well into our backyard and even over the house behind us and to the street beyond. More wind, more creaking, more whispering, another jump and leap of heart and stomach, more tightening of my grip around Edward's branches.
It was quite warm by then. Although there was a thicker number of branches, they were sparser in needles and miniature offshoot branches, and therefore not as much shade from the sun. But there was still quite a bit. It was also bending towards the warmer part of the afternoon, anyway, when things got sleepy and the cicadas started singing. I watched a dragonfly hum past and on its errand; birds sang in the trees, but they, too, were getting quieter as the warmth of the late summer afternoon worked itself into the nooks and crannies of the trees and flowers. It was still comfortable in the shade, but it was warmer and the type where it would be easy to slip into a doze out in the back yard, book tented on my chest.
And then I was there – as high as I really could go. I had gotten there without even really paying attention to the fact I had! I'd climbed all the way to the top, higher than anyone else in the neighborhood!
The tree swayed quite a bit, giving the impression it was almost like being on a trebuchet (well...not quite, of course). I saw my mother in our back yard, weeding, my little brother playing with his toys near by. Scattered over the lawn were plastic bowls and an inflatable pool, now only half-heartedly filled with air and water – remnants from a water fight the day before. A plane buzzed overhead and the cicadas sang.
I realized it wasn't so bad – plus the view was magnificent. I could see over the houses and down across the town of Corvallis, a hamlet-like town that houses Oregon State University. There was a haze in the distance and around the rim of horizon from controlled field burning. Much of the land that surrounds Corvallis is farmland – both commercial and local farmers that cater to the organic-saturated culture of older and newer hippies that lived in the surrounding areas, as well as the general, run-of-the-mill everyday families. Oregon State uses much of the land, too, as it began as an agricultural school in its early years, growing into forestry and engineering; Linus Pauling graduated from there.
But it wasn't those things I pondered as I sat, comfortably belted into a sturdy seated position by Edward's upper branches, looking out over my queendom. I could see for miles, it felt; the rolling hills of the Willamette valley rolled out before and around me; Corvallis sits nestled into the foothills of the Coast Range.
The afternoon droned on, cicadas lulling sleepiness in on their hypnotic, rhythmic chirping. It had grown in intensity as the warmth of the afternoon grew. I could hear my little brother, who was, at that time, about 3 or 4, calling for me. "Hair! Hair – ! Hair - ? ...Hedder – !" (He still calls me "Hair")
He disappeared out of my line of sight, and I heard him calling me, his voice floating out of my open bedroom and bathroom windows; faintly, I could hear him calling as he ran up the stairs, then as he looked around upstairs. Eventually I saw him reappear in the backyard, shouting to our mother that he couldn't find me. She put a comforting arm around him, likely saying I was off in the neighborhood somewhere. It was not a town where there were many such worries. Technically I was supposed to let her know where I'd gone, but I rarely did if I was within that neighborhood as it was a given.
I thought about calling down to him, but up there, with the grand view and the quiet – I wanted to keep it to myself. Besides, I knew he'd want to climb up to me, which meant I'd have to get down and I didn't want to do that just yet. I was so relaxed (though some twinges of fear still came with the bigger gusts), I wanted to just stay up there.
Sunshine warm on my face, Edward creak-rock-whispering, I closed my eyes – and fell asleep.
I don't know how long I slept, but when I awoke I was thirsty, so I climbed back down, becoming even more sap-laden than before. I went back inside to get a bottle of Coca-Cola – back then they were still glass – hoping for the ever-elusive letter "E" to win the gigando prize in the game they had presented us all summer long where we had to spell a phrase with their name in it; we had dozens of letters, but nobody in our entire neighborhood could get that "E". We began to suspect it possibly didn't even exist. I cracked the top off and found another repeated letter. I tossed it into the can where we had all of the others and went to seek out my next form of entertainment.
Later, when I went over to my friend's house across the street, I told her I'd climbed to the top of the tree. She didn't believe me – so I said, "I can prove it!"
A year older than I was, she considered herself more worldly. She followed me out, still not believing me...and so, without hesitation, I climbed to the top again and called down, "Come up!"
She hesitated, calling up, "I don't want to...." I was more than a little smugly satisfied and climbed back down. It was always fun to show off at that age. I continued to climb to the top after that, only sticking to the lower tiers when I was with friends, or if my little brother were nearby.
Sadly, about three or four years later, we found out that Edward had become infested with beetles to the point where they could not be exterminated; if left that way, they would spread to all the other pine trees in the area, and he would die a slow death. We had to make the choice to cut him down; the entire neighborhood mourned the loss, as he'd been our friend for so many years – as he had been to a generation of children before us when the neighborhood was established in the 1960s and 70s.
I still miss that tree, and it makes me sad thinking about it now. I've never found another climbing tree that matched Edward, and I think of that afternoon often, because it seems like such a pinnacle moment of summer, childhood and triumph.
It's also one I think of when I feel/hear myself thinking I can't about something, and I realize that if a child who wasn't terribly fond of heights (i.e. terrified) could climb to the top of the world (or so it felt) one summer afternoon despite that – right past a self-imposed, imaginary "safety-line", I can as an adult, too.
In my mind's eye, I can see Edward shining upwards, sunshine falling down over his needles as he climbed into the sky, wind whispering through his branches, picking up the scent of sap and summer, as if he still lives in his spot of home, watching over his neighborhood like an old guardian providing shelter and safety and shade for picnics and reading. Maybe he does.
In a way, I suppose, he was the best kind of teacher of all – what Tom Brown Jr, a naturalist, refers to as a "coyote teacher" – one who provides just enough answers to create more curiosity and an environment for the student to learn on their own, while still providing support. Looking up through Edward's branches I saw exactly that – answers to my questions of how on earth could I ever reach the top?! – but he left it up to me to find the path and my own determination. Which I did.
And I know that if I had fallen – he most definitely would have caught me, helped me up and shooed me back on my way up.
