Northern_Lights_2021

37 Willow had sat on the shore’s edge for thirty-one years, roots burrowed deep into the dirt—the mix of coarse sand and errant dirt offering good drainage for the soggy summer rains of Cooper’s Rock National Forest, West Virginia. Her limbs were expansive and strong, reaching to touch the blue of the sky and reveling in the damp darkness of the humid, southern nights. Long spindly branches returning the brushing touch of those who came to see her. She had seen many things in her time. Children playing, adults crying, the silent solace of grandparents that had lived far beyond Willow’s own years. Distantly, she wondered about the things they might have seen. She could only imagine. But Willow’s favorite, favorite, most favorite memory of all time was the love story of Dee Robins of Old Town, West Virginia, and Ike Chizoba of New Geyser, West Virginia. Both were small towns, only ten minutes from Cooper’s Rock in either direction—fifteen minutes by bike. Willow had put it down to fate being particularly kind that day, having willed Dee and Ike’s parents to take either child on the forest trails that day, both pushed along by the summer breeze to meet at the Cooper’s Rock lakeshore. Their eyes had met briefly, a spark of mischievousness between brown eyes and green, the two of them running off as their parents began to chat—both knowing that the gabbing of the southerners would last for hours, and they’d better make the best of it before they start losing brain cells out of sheer boredom. That had only been the start. Willow had watched them grow from toddlers playing in the cool water of the lake, to ten-year olds roughhousing on the grass before her. She would never forget the “Great Fallout of 2012,” in which someone had told Ike that Dee had been hanging out with another boy at her school, and Ike had thrown the world’s biggest fit (and then some). Dee had made a great case as to why it shouldn’t matter. It’s not like Ike was her boyfriend or anything, although Willow felt as though the two were entirely too young to be worrying about anything of the sort, but then again, Willow was a tree. She didn’t know a whole lot about these sorts of things. Ike had questioned her—Why couldn’t he be her boyfriend? Wouldn’t it be better that way, seeing as the two got along so well? Of course, Dee, being the type of young girl she was, had told him that he would, and Willow might quote, “Half of the man she would ever need in a boyfriend!” In hindsight, it was very funny, two children talking about matters of ‘men’ and ‘women.’ Their fallout had passed sometime in freshman year of high school, with only Ike coming to visit Willow during their time apart. He had sat at her trunk where Willow’s limbs wouldn’t brush against him, alone, and concealed from the world behind the soft curtain of green and yellow foliage. It was only there, she assumed, that Ike could shed his tears over Dee Robins. Cooper’s Rock Love Story Kirby Fesler