The tower

No matter how much I didn’t want it, 

my birthday still came. And I cannot evade getting one year older.

It was late afternoon. I decided to do something for my birthday. I went to the canopy tower.

The tower locates in a shady ravine. A little frog was making a love song nearby. Greenish yellow algae grew on the poles and steps of the tower, making it looks really age. I carefully went on the steps, slowly, one by one. My hand grabbed the rope that goes through the center of the tower. When one has a climbing kook he can secure himself on the rope. But I don’t. So I have to trust my hand. In the beginning I was a little cautious. I was always imaging I would fall in between the two steps and break something on me. But after ten levels I stopped thinking of anything.

Gradually there was more light. The big dark-green leaves of epiphytes on the trunks were seemingly in the reach of my hands. Gradually there was more wind. My sweat soaked T-shirt start to breath the forest air, so was my hair. Gradually I heard sounds that I never heard before-the harmonics of wind going through all shapes of gaps between the trees, the sudden tighten of the cables and the “zhi—ya--”of the swinging tower. Though at such a height that a misstep can be fetal, everything around appeared cozily free. And I felt I want to stretch my arms and legs. The shrunk mind was like an expanding balloon that was about to take off.

All of a sudden all the treetops are below me. The canal appeared. The eagles soared around. Clouds naughtily dodged wind’s chase. The supreme brightness.

I reached out to embrace the sky. I cried. I waved. I laughed. I proudly declared that I am twenty-five. I am going to have MY life, all the way through the shady bottom, until the paramount top.

Being twenty-five now, I’ve been to the tower.