The Tree of Life

Where in the world would a skinny white girl growing up in a tiny farm town in the 70s American midwest get the idea that Africa is the one place she loved and had to see? I think the trees told me. Seeped it under my skin where I scraped and shimmied up against theirs to get as high as sense would let me. Held me in their web of tangled roots and canopies stretching round the earth while I spent whole afternoons at their feet making little villages from the parts of themselves they shed.

In Africa is where it all begins. The tree of life. The birthplace of human. Later I discovered scientists hypothesize about it, archeologists dig up evidence and African folklore tell its tales. I just knew because of the trees. Is it a coincidence that the first time I saw a photograph of a baobab tree I was shocked at its beauty, struck me as profoundly perfect, mesmerized me. Or was it calling me home in the secret language spoken amongst trees?