Not Hitting the Tree

I can still remember the day I learned to ride a bicycle. I was rather old for the task, somewhere in my tenth year, but the bike was a large one, and the only one in our family at the time; plus I had five older siblings who were riding it before me. When I finally got my chance and a teacher, (my oldest brother consented to teach me), I climbed aboard the vehicle and began my adventure. 

Slowly at first, then peddling faster and faster, with my brother beside me holding me upright, I began to pick up speed and find my balance. Before I knew it, he had let go and I was riding on my own. “Just like that!” I thought. It seemed easier than I had expected. A block away, I deftly turned a corner, confident in my new-found skill, feeling the wind blow through my hair and the exhilaration of speed and success. 

The little one-horse town I grew up in, was so small that we had no paved roads. There were perhaps four full blocks in the town with somewhere between one and six houses in each block. We had a post office, a bar, a gas station with a mechanic, the elevators, a fire station, a church and a school. In other years there had also been a restaurant and grocery store but these had both been abandoned over the years as people had moved away. However, in my childhood there was one landmark in that little town which stood out above all the rest. It was the Money Tree. It was a Cottonwood tree as tall as a three story house, and nearly as broad, with leaves the size of a sheet of paper and when the wind blew, as it seemed to do all the time in North Dakota, the leaves made a wonderful, powerful sound that filled the air. 

As I turned the corner, heading down hill with my bike, proud of my new skill and ability, I was thinking of the money tree. It's sound was filling the air and suddenly I realized, it's trunk was also filling the road! Apparently, when the town was built, the tree had been right where the road needed to be, but rather than cut it down, which in those days would have been more trouble than a little town would want to deal with, they simply put the road around it—on both sides—and on a corner with only one way to turn. In other words, the tree ran down the middle of the road and I was heading right for it, down hill at ever-increasing speeds.

Even at that age, my mind was making all sorts of physics calculations about hitting tree trunks at high speeds, hitting gravel at high speeds, careening off the road at high speeds, etc. Panic filled my mind with these brief but harrowing thoughts and I instinctively cried out for help. I knew that somehow I needed to stop, but my brother had failed to instruct me in the finer points of this exercise and I was stranded on the bicycle, going down hill, headed straight for a very large tree on a gravelly corner with nowhere to go but into the tree, off the road and into the railroad tracks, or around the slippery gravel road on a sharp corner. My brief experience had taught me that I was simply not qualified to do any of these things without facing severe injury, at least! 

When I called for help to stop the fast-moving death machine I was riding, my brother had called out, “Step on the brakes!” I'm sure he thought this would be sufficient instruction in my predicament, however, he had failed to teach me where the brakes resided and how to 'step' on them. To save time, I simply yelled, “How?” To which he quickly responded, as he ran down the hill after me, “Pedal backwards!” This counter intuitive instruction was not questioned by my child-like mind. I simply did what he said which caused me to veer sharply to one side and I slid sideways to the ground. The disaster averted, (though I was somewhat bruised and scratched), I got up, smiling and grateful for another chance to live and perhaps ride the bike again. 

 

Often, in my life today, I find myself going down a hill, faster than I would like, headed for a tree that I cannot seem to avoid. Often I call out for help. Still more often, a response comes that seems counter intuitive, like for instance, “Love your enemy”. I do it anyway. And today, after being saved from one disaster after another, I'm again grateful for one more day to live and ride a bike.