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Treetown
By David Hebden*
and Wayne Jacobsen
There was a town
much like any other town, except it had no trees. A disease had wiped
them out so long ago that no one living today even remembered they
had existed. They had grown accustomed to the barren landscape.
One day a young
man went to the library looking for something to relieve his boredom
and by apparent chance he came upon the book. The library had been
built when the town was new and small, nothing more than a small
outpost with a train station. It just so happened that the young man
was walking through a dusty section of the library when the noon
express train rumbled past vibrating every shelf in the library. The
dust stirred and he sneezed as it tickled his nose. And there,
sticking out of the bookcase ready to fall to the floor was the book.
He reached out to push it back into place, thinking to himself that
they should move the library away from the train station for a bit of
peace and quiet.
Obviously it was a
long-neglected book, which made him curious. He plucked it from the
shelf and opened it. There were no pictures, and the pages were old
and yellowed. It seemed to be a collection of stories about the life
of a gardener. “I may as well have a look at it,” he
thought. “I’ve nothing else to do.”
Later that
afternoon as he sat outside his home sipping a cool drink in the
shade of his porch he began leafing through the book and came across
a chapter about trees. This fascinated him, since he had only heard
of trees and had never seen a real tree. He knew what wood was, but
it always came on the delivery train, not from trees.
As he read he
became even more excited about trees and what they provided. Why they
make shade and hold delicious fruit to be eaten! They offer
windbreaks from the winter storms, and fuel for heat when they grew
old and tired. “What a wonderful thing trees must be!
Wouldn’t it be great if we had some around here?”
As the days passed
he grew more excited and began to talk to his friends about the book
and the trees it described. Soon he found others who had heard about
trees and one or two who had actually seen them from a distance. The
excitement grew in the town as people wanted to have some trees. A
town meeting was held and the mayor asked the young man to read about
trees from the book. A vote was called and the citizens decided to
build some trees. Soon the quiet town was a hive of activity.
Committees were formed to design and build the trees, to import the
lumber and even to gather the fruit.
Soon trees began
to spring up everywhere in that small town. Well, at least what they
thought were trees! They stayed as true to the book as they could.
For roots they dug holes and buried old rope because they sounded
closer to roots than anything else they had. They nailed these roots
into the large timbers they imported for tree trunks. They nailed
‘branches’ to the trunks and the ladies cut leaves out of
their finest linen, painted them and glued them on the branches. They
also gathered fruit and tied them onto the trees so they could pick
them whenever they wanted.
Eventually the
streets were lined with trees. Though they looked similar at a
distance, up close you could see their differences. It seemed that
different people had interpreted the section of the book on trees
quite differently. The branches jutted out at different angles. The
colors of the leaves were different colors and they only used the
fruits they thought best.
Visitors came from
far and wide to see trees for the first time in their lives and
marvel at the hard work it had taken to build so many. By popular
vote it was decided to change the towns name from Prairie Town to
Treetown. The book that started it all was enshrined in the town hall
under glass. A new industry sprang up to satisfy the growing number
of visitors. The townspeople set up tours, opened gift-shops and
Treetown T-shirts became all the rage in that part of the world.
But as time went
by the excitement over the trees faded for many. They grew weary of
building and maintaining the trees and wondered why they hung fruit
on them at all, insisting that the fruit stayed fresher when stored
inside. Some even began to question if these in fact were real trees.
The experts—those who had memorized the chapter on
trees—quickly attacked those with questions. Of course they are
real. Look at all the time and money we’ve spent on them and how
many people it drew to their town. Could so many people be so wrong?
And even when the
spoiling fruit seemed to make people sick, the people themselves were
blamed for not believing that the trees made the fruit better. Soon a
law was passed to require that fruit could only be eaten straight
from a tree and no one was allowed to store any in their homes
anymore. People grew disillusioned and discouraged with the endless
work that brought so little return. “We just have to work harder
to make it better,” became the refrain of the town fathers.
Most people fell
in line afraid that they would be shunned as troublemakers and
ridiculed for not putting the town’s prosperity ahead of their
own ideas. But there were a few who just couldn’t fit in. They
stopped working on the trees and stopped eating their fruit. At first
people tried to convince them how wrong they were, pointing to the
phenomenal growth of the tree industry in the town. “Why we even
send our experts to other cities and they too are building their own
trees!” This worked with some, who had grown too tired to fight
the status quo and decided it was just easier to fit in.
Those who
continued to question the townspeople’s obsession with trees,
however, found it difficult to stay. Some of those working on the
trees would throw sticks or fruit at them in anger as they passed by.
They called them ‘treeless ones’ and would tell them,
“If you don’t like our trees you should leave our town. But
then you’ll never know the joy only trees can bring.” Then
they would look at each other and smile. “It’s for their
own good you know. They need the food.” Finally a few moved out
of town, rather than endure the continued abuse.
One day the young
man who had discovered the book was walking by the resplendent, new
city hall that had been built with all the money drawn to Treetown.
He sat down on the plaza beneath the trees, gazing at the gilded
glass case on the front of the building. Locked inside was the book
that had caused so much division. He was heartbroken that what had
seemed to hold such promise had caused such trouble, and he cursed
the day that he’d pulled the book off of the shelf.
Soon he found a
stranger sitting down beside him on the bench. “Are you
okay?” the stranger asked. “You don’t look well.”
The young man
looked up at the stranger and was captured by the caring look in his
eyes. “I once was a ‘treefolk’ but now I am a
‘treeless one’,” sighed the young man. “I thought
the trees would bring us great joy, but it all turned out to be more
work and trouble.”
“What
trees?” the stranger asked.
“Look
around,” the young man said pointing to the trees that lined the plaza.
“Good
heavens! Are those things what you’re calling trees?” the
man exclaimed pointing to the towers of wood pieces, painted linen
and apples hanging from string.
“That’s
what they are. We built them using a book I found in the library and &ldots;”
“Wait a
minute,” interjected the stranger. “What was the name of
this book?”
“Uhmm&ldots;
The Gardener and His Garden. It was an autobiography, I think&ldots;
something like that anyway.”
“Ah, I see.
So you have never seen a real tree?” questioned the stranger as
he looked around the plaza.
Puzzled the young
man looked at his new friend. “Aren’t these real trees? We
built them as best we knew.”
“That’s
not a tree! Just how much of the book did you read anyway?”
“Well just
the section on trees actually. I glanced through the rest of it but
it all seemed a bit boring, except the part about trees. We
didn’t have any trees at the time and they sounded so incredible.”
Chuckling, the
stranger stood up. “Follow me. I think I have some news for
you.” Intrigued by the stranger the young man got up and
followed him over to the glass case. “So you never really read
the book, eh? No wonder this town is so strange.”
“What do you
mean, strange?”
“The book was
not about gardens or trees, but about the gardener who grows them.
Real trees cannot be built; they can only be grown.”
“Grown?”
“Yes, you
plant seeds in the ground, keep them watered and they will spring up
into a tree that will really bear fruit.”
“Trees
grow?” the young man sighed in shock. He’d never heard of
such a thing. “I thought you had to build them?”
“I know my
friend, but you have never seen a real tree. They cannot be built no
matter how clear the description or skilled the craftsman. You can
only grow them. If you had read the whole book you would have known
that. You would have gotten to know the gardener and how he does his
work to make beautiful trees out of the smallest seeds. There were
even some seeds glued to the back of the cover so that you could
plant them and watch them grow. Didn’t you see them?”
The young man had
a very sick feeling in his stomach. “There were some little,
round specks of some kind.”
“That’s them.”
“I thought
they were just specks of dirt and cleaned them out before we
enshrined the book.”
“Only those
who would have taken time to read the book and get to know the
gardener would have recognized them as seeds, since they were so
small and look so insignificant.”
“I guess
I’ve made a real mess of things.”
“Messes can
be fixed,” said the stranger.
“But I’ve
thrown out the seeds and now I can’t even read the parts about
the Gardener.”
“Sure you
can,” said the stranger, pulling a copy of the book out of his
back pocket and handing it to the young man. “You see I know the
Gardener who wrote this book.”
The young man took
the book in his hands and his face lit up with a smile. “You do?”
“He’s my
father, and I’d be happy to show you everything you need to know
about him.”
“That would
great!” Then flipping open the book he ran his hands across the
inside of the back of the cover. “They’re here!”
“That they
are! Now that you know what they’re for, let’s go plant
them and watch what happens!”
“A real tree?
Won’t the others be surprised!”
“That they
will, my friend. That they will&ldots;”
_____________________
*David Hebden of
Vancouver Island, BC helped write the last article in BodyLife and
first wrote the tale that became Treetown.
Continue to our
second article, Breaking Free
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