Charles, you have made my day with the big tree you chose for this essay.

Even though you have the location of the tree slightly wrong, and even though the photo crops out much of the tree itself (its magnificent trunk, its soft crown), I recognized it instantly. I grew up in a house next door to this tree, and spent a lot of child hours staring at it from my bedroom window.

If you’re going to be an awkward kid staring out your bedroom window at a tree, you couldn’t ask for a better one.

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