The Weight Of Years

Barley, a dog, stands in front of an enormous tree. You can tell the tree is enormous because a Barley is provided for scale.

When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in a condo with an adjoining shared park area. One tree in particular was clearly the oldest, a bulbous mass gone wide and knotty under gravity’s relentless pull. The story I was told (although I did not then and do not now have any way of verifying it) was that it has been planted during the reign of Napoleon. Of the trees I now have daily access to, this is the only one what gives even a fraction of the “I’m too old for this shit” energy that the ancient giant I would visit in my childhood conveyed when I would stand at its base.