Hyperion

The foreman squinted up into the enormous tree, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, and caught a glimpse of the old woman. He couldn’t believe she had climbed so far up.

“Hey, you!” he called out, “What are you doing up there?”

“Leave me alone!” came the hidden reply from high in the canopy. “I just want to be left alone!”

“You can’t stay up there! I’m just trying to do my job!”

“Your job is EXACTLY why I am up here!”

The foreman was pissed. It’s too hot to be playing these games out here, he thought. He had a job to do and this old lady was standing, or rather, squatting, in his way.

“Lady! Get down from there right now or I’ll climb up there and get you down!”

“FAT CHANCE!”

The foreman didn’t know what to do. He pulled out his phone and dialed his boss.

***

In a shady grove in the woods near the edge of town, the sun peeked through the lone hole in the canopy and shined down on a smiling man and his young daughter crouched by a fallen tree, felled the night before by the spring storm.

“Look Sallie.” He held her tiny hand, fashioning her fingers into a pointer. “Each ring was a year in this old tree’s life.”

Pressing her finger with his own, they traced the core at the center of the fresh log, and then traced each ring outward from there. Together, they counted the rings aloud.

“One…two… three…”

“See? This tree was over 120 years old!” the man said, finishing the count at last. “It was just a baby when your daddy’s Grandpa was born!”

Wistfully, the man wiped the corner of his eye with his sleeve, thinking back to the many hours of his own happy childhood spent in the grove with his Grandpa. He looked up through the hole in the canopy to the blue sky beyond. Sallie took it all in and stood up.

“Don’t cry Daddy.”

“Oh, I’m not crying baby. I just love this place is all.”

The man stood up and walked over to the battered Ford pick-up truck. He retrieved the rake and shovel from the back, along with the two buckets. Sticking the shovel into the ground, he stepped on the shoulder and drove the blade with authority into the soft earth.

“Just the right spot,” he told his daughter.

The girl was mesmerized and watched wide eyed as her father returned to the pick-up to get the sapling. He brought it over to the spot and set it gently on the ground. Taking out his pocketknife, he carefully cut the burlap from around the root ball and spread the fabric out around the little tree.

The soil gave easily to the spade as the man dug the hole and poured some of the water from the bucket into the excavation. Next came the bucket of cow dung.

“This will help him grow,” he explained to the wondering child.

“When does the tree go in the hole, Daddy?” Sallie asked, excitedly, but impatiently, “When does the tree go in? Put the tree in!”

“Patience, little girl, patience.”

Finally placing the sapling into the hole, the man used the spade to fill in around the root ball and pat down the soft soil on top. Sallie sprinkled the last of the water from the bucket around the base of the little trunk as her daddy declared victory.

“All done,” he told his little girl. “He will grow big and strong now, just like you!”

Taking her small hand into his own, the man strolled happily with his beloved child to the truck and lifted her up onto the seat. Sallie beamed as she looked back and surveyed the grove.

***

Sallie returned to the grove to check on her tree every day and measured her own growth against it. Before too long, it was clear that the tree was winning that race and whereas once Sallie looked down at the top of the tree, she soon had to crane her neck to look up into the spreading canopy above.

Once she started grade school, Sallie would visit her tree every day on the way home and, when she was big enough, would climb up high and swing by her knees from the stout limbs. Sallie brought her best friend David to visit her tree too, and the two of them would spend hours climbing up the sturdy branches and playing hide and seek amidst the leafy green.

Sallie read in school about the ancient Greek Titans and that was when she named her tree Hyperion, as her tree was surely a Titan himself.

In high school, Sallie and David continued to visit every day after class and sat together in the shade. Together they talked about everything and anything, about the past and their future.

Sallie desperately wanted Hyperion to approve of this special boy who made her heart skip and bent her head close to the trunk, whispering confidentially, “I really, really like him…”

When the time came to be married, Sallie and David stood under Hyperion and exchanged their vows.

“I love you,” they said to each other, and meant it.

Three children, two boys and a girl, came in quick succession those first years, then after a while another girl and as the family continued to grow, so did Hyperion. Sallie taught her children how to climb, as she herself had learned years before. The family would regularly picnic in the shade of the great tree. From high above, Hyperion watched over them all, a silent sentinel protecting his little family.

When David fell sick, Sallie came by herself to meditate and pray for strength. And when David couldn’t recover, Sallie buried him in the grove under their beloved friend. Ten years later, her daddy joined David there in the shade.

Through it all, even as Sallie was maturing through adulthood, she never tired of being with her Titan.

***

When she read the notice in the Morning News that a developer was going to build a new shopping center in town, Sallie didn’t really think anything more about it. She was more of a “nature gal” than a “shopping gal” after all. She finished her coffee and walked out to her shed and got her gardening things.

Having raised her children and seen her grandchildren through college and get started on families of their own, Sallie was content. With a lifetime mostly behind her, she kept herself active and still visited Hyperion at least once a week. Every Saturday morning, Sallie drove her beat up old truck to the quiet grove to clean up around his base, rake the leaves and trim back the neighboring bushes to give her majestic Titan room to breathe.

The energetic woman was not prepared for what she found on this Saturday though, as she approached the grove. Little red and yellow flags dotted the landscape all around. Sallie bent down and pulled up a little yellow flag. Looking at it quizzically, she squinted up into her tree as if to ask Hyperion: What’s going on?

A beeping sound came from a distance, and a deep rumble as the earth shook.

Beep … beep … beep …

Sallie grabbed her rake and followed the sounds through the woods.

Beep … beep … beep …

As she broke into the clearing, Sallie’s heart jumped into her throat.

The distant rumbling now revealed itself to be bulldozers, extremely close at hand! The monsters were clearing the land, knocking down trees and moving the soft earth, destroying everything in their path. Bulldozers everywhere! It took exactly ten seconds for Sallie to realize precisely what she needed to do.

She raced home and pulled up in front of her house with a screech of tires. Leaving the engine running, Sallie ran inside and grabbed her knapsack out of the closet. The woman worked quickly and deliberately as she filled it with fresh fruit and bottles of water. She was on a mission, a woman possessed.

Returning to the grove, she started climbing Hyperion as she had done thousands of times before, climbing higher and higher. Her knapsack slung over her shoulder, Sallie climbed until she reached a height where she could see the evil bulldozers plying their evil trade. She squatted on a large bough and watched intently.

Sallie stayed up in her tree for the better part of a week, watching as the destructive rampage came closer and closer.

***

“Work around her,” the supervisor told the foreman on the phone. “What’s an old lady gonna do?”

“What do you mean, ’Work around her’,” the foreman replied, frustrated. “That tree is in the middle of the goddam parking lot! I can’t just work around her!”

“Figure it out.” Then, click.

 The foreman looked back up into the tree.

“Hey lady! What do you want from me? Are you going to come down or not?”

“NO!!” Sallie sat firm in her beloved Titan. She would not be moved.

***

The kindly man pulled his car into the parking space and opened his door. Walking to the passenger side, he lifted his daughter out of the seat and set her feet down on the sidewalk.

“We’re here, honey!” he told the little girl brightly and took her hand.

They walked over to the grassy area in the middle of the parking lot where the mammoth tree stood.

“That’s a big tree Daddy, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. He must be a hundred years old. Look, there’s a sign.”

Reaching the front of the titan, the man knelt down and fashioned his daughter’s tiny hand into a pointer. Together, they traced the words on the sign and read aloud, “The name Hyperion comes from the Greek for ‘the one who watches from above’...”