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Only the Tree Can Say Clop, clop, clop. His footsteps seemed to ask time itself to wait for him. "Take my hand," he'd say, "the air's just right for a walk." Clop, clop, clop. How well I remember that sound. How often I've stopped whatever I'm doing just to recall those slow, measured, certain steps. Clop, clop, clop. "Where are we going, grandfather?" I'd ask excitedly, slipping my small hand into his. "Going?" he'd say with a twinkle in his voice, "anywhere and everywhere, and nowhere in particular. Let's you and I just walk until we decide to stop, and then we'll be there." And that's how it always began. Hand in hand, my two steps to his one, we'd sometimes walk down the road to where it ended in the apple orchard. Slop, slop, slop. Our feet would sink into the moist earth beneath the trees. The warm, humid air would be saturated with the ripe, tangy odor of fallen fruit. On and on we would walk, while the wind played high, haunting melodies in the leaves above our heads. "Ah, these trees," he mused on an especially memorable walk, "they've been here for as long as I can remember." Splush! The sound of fruit underfoot punctuated his reverie. Splush! Once again sang the echo off the high stone wall at the end of the orchard. "And these same trees," he continued, "will probably be here when you are as old as I am." "Is that a very long time?" I asked, stooping to feel along the ground for the perfect apple. When you're nine, trees, apples, and especially grandfathers seem likely to last forever. Swish! And the perfect apple sailed aloft into the tree above. Pop! Smack! Crash! Schplump! The missile streaked toward the earth bringing other apples with it as it fell. "Yes," grandfather said, in a strange, far away voice I had never heard before, "that's a very long time." His hand tightened slightly around mine. "When I was just about your age," he continued, sounding suddenly less somber, "I used to come to this orchard almost every day. I had a secret hiding place high in the branches of one of these very trees." "Would you show me?" I asked. "Please?" The breeze had suddenly ceased its playing, and in the absence of our footsteps the silent trees seemed to be listening to our every word. I was suddenly ashamed. It was, after all, his secret. Maybe he wanted to keep it to himself. Without speaking, he led me to a tree whose trunk was slightly smaller than the ones I had already felt. The first limb was just within my reach. Placing my hands around it, I hung for an instant, my feet inches above the ground, and then I swung upward toward the sound of the wind which had begun to sing once again. The sudden movement must have frightened the fruit which hung all about me. Bump, bump, bump. Apples pushed and shoved each other, to get a better view. As I steadied myself on the first limb, the echo of my movements reflected back to me from the hard irregular surfaces of the branches close to my face. "I can see!" I called, placing my hands around the next limb, and working my feet against the rough bark of the trunk. "The echoes are my eyes." Grandfather's reply was drowned out by the excited voices of the apples announcing my approach. Bump! Splush! Splat! A large one struck the limb just above my fingertips. It danced down my arm and continued its journey toward the ground. "A little to the right," grandfather called. His voice came floating up to me from further away than I expected. I locked my fingers tightly around a somewhat smaller limb, and pulled hard to the right. Up and out I swung, my body almost perpendicular to the tree. Swish, sang the leaves, as they brushed against my flying feet. Swash, answered the sound of my jeans as they scraped against the bark. The entire tree seemed to shudder as an almost magnetic force robbed my body of its flight, at the very last minute, and pulled me down hard against the trunk. There was no quieting the apples now. I was already among them, and they jostled each other noisily in their haste to get the first glimpse of their intruder. Bump, bump, bump. They encircled me with their sound. Slap, slap, slap. They beat against the very leaves that held them captive. And suddenly, without warning, they were still. "Grandfather!" I called excitedly, "I think I've found it." Only a distant bird unlocked the stillness with its high, pure song. From somewhere below, a bee buzzed lazily, in search of nectar, and then it too was still. "Grandfather?" I called again, but only the echo of my own voice came back to me, and somehow, it too seemed strangely subdued. Puzzled by my grandfather's silence, I again turned my attention to the tree. Wrapping my arms around the trunk, I leaned my head against a slight depression in the bark. It was well worn and unusually smooth. Surprised, I lifted my head and placed my hand in the space. My fingers moved gently over the soft, moist, wood. How often, I wondered, had my grandfather sat in this very same place and touched the very same spot. Or was it the wind or the rain that had hollowed and smoothed this special place. I ran my hand down the trunk as far as I could reach. The limb that supported me seemed quite sturdy. It too had an amazingly smooth texture. It seemed to have been placed there especially for me. As I sat, letting the fingers of my eyes wonder over the well-kept secrets of my grandfather's childhood, the sound of the dancing leaves offered their own quiet recollections of an earlier time. "Grandfather?" I called once again, but I somehow knew he wouldn't be there. This was my grandfather's way of doing it. This tree, with its special secret place, was now all mine. I had found it, all by myself, just as he must have done, so many years before. Or had his grandfather led him to this very same spot, only to slip away as quietly as the passing breeze? Only the tree can say.