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Morton Peak
Monday, 21 June 2010 20:04The Birthday was good. Morton Peak is a fire tower in real life, but it was my tree house for a night. Getting there is a challenge, not for a city slickers vehicle. Made me love the old white truck as we rattled over deep ruts and gullies climbing high above San Bernadino on the way to Big Bear Mountain. Wildflowers abound - so unusual for this late in the year.
There are 2 old pines on the top, a man-made drinking hole for critters, an outhouse, a picnic table and the tower. Its excellent. You have to climb up 2 stories of rickety narrow steps, lift a trap door and you emerge on a catwalk encircling a one room paradise with 360 views, a bed, a telescope, shelves, books on the local flora and fauna, lots of posters on how to look for a fire and that is about it.
After my father died and my mother decided to stay on the farm and make a go of it, she built, by herself, a treehouse for me and my sis. I must have lived there the summer I was 10 and a few years after. That is where I read Harper Lee, John Nichols(I am the Wizard of Loneliness - alakadetmole!), cried as Scarlett made an absolute mess of everything, Auntie Mame, every Tales from the Crypt I could find, H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, every gothic ghost story the library had.
It was huge to me and now, there is nothing but a few planks and I don't see how it could have contained my world, but it did. That is where I started to keep a journal too...a tradition that I keep today.
Simon said he had never seen me skip before. We decided that our condo is kind of like a treehouse. sort of.
We were up at 5:30 to see the sun rise and the valley below hold the clouds like a bowl.
I will hold this birthday close for a long time.
There are 2 old pines on the top, a man-made drinking hole for critters, an outhouse, a picnic table and the tower. Its excellent. You have to climb up 2 stories of rickety narrow steps, lift a trap door and you emerge on a catwalk encircling a one room paradise with 360 views, a bed, a telescope, shelves, books on the local flora and fauna, lots of posters on how to look for a fire and that is about it.
After my father died and my mother decided to stay on the farm and make a go of it, she built, by herself, a treehouse for me and my sis. I must have lived there the summer I was 10 and a few years after. That is where I read Harper Lee, John Nichols(I am the Wizard of Loneliness - alakadetmole!), cried as Scarlett made an absolute mess of everything, Auntie Mame, every Tales from the Crypt I could find, H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, every gothic ghost story the library had.
It was huge to me and now, there is nothing but a few planks and I don't see how it could have contained my world, but it did. That is where I started to keep a journal too...a tradition that I keep today.
Simon said he had never seen me skip before. We decided that our condo is kind of like a treehouse. sort of.
We were up at 5:30 to see the sun rise and the valley below hold the clouds like a bowl.
I will hold this birthday close for a long time.
