Comment

Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Strathcona County Library.
Apr 18, 2013
A dusty mud path ran through a village. Every day, people and animals would walk along the path, traveling from here to there and back again. One day, a little boy discovered something small and green in the middle of the path. It was a sapling. The little boy took some rocks and put them around the tree to protect it just as the local mango seller rushed past, calling “Out of the way! Out of the way!” As time passed, the tree grew bigger and bigger. Its trunk thickened and its branches spread wider and wider. One day, a pair of birds built their nest in the tree. As the tree grew still larger, more birds, and squirrels too, sat in the tree. People gathered beneath it, grateful for the shade that its canopy provided. Years later, the path became a road. It was graded and flattened by machines, which were careful to avoid the large tree. By this time, the village had become a bustling city. Now, all sorts of noisy traffic rushed by the tree, traveling from here to there and back again – bicycles, scooters, cars, buses and trucks. The tree remained standing in the middle of the busy road, a small oasis of peace, still sheltering birds and other creatures and providing shade, its roots digging deep into the ground and its leaves rustling in the evening breeze. Then one day, an elderly man visited the magnificent tree with his grandchildren and paused to remember the tree as a small sapling needing protection in the middle of a dusty path…. This insightful story, set in India, evokes the peace and the magic that a tree can instill in our too-busy world.