I’m 6.

A close friend and I are trying to work our writing muscles with weekly prompts we exchange.

This week, she tasked me with the prompt: write something your inner child would delight in.

Here goes…

I don’t know how many hours have passed. All I know is I really have to pee, but I will go on holding it. I don’t want to walk into the house to be noticed, stopped, talked to, or god-forbid, given a chore to complete.

Plus, getting down for a bathroom break would take too long.

I want to stay here.

I want to remain in the sweet solitude of these branches, concealed by green vines where no one knows I am, where no one else goes, where I can lay across limbs that perfectly crisscross to create a crevice I can’t fall out of.

Who needs a treehouse when the tree itself is a home?

At 6, I mastered the footwork of hoisting myself into this weeping willow’s canopy—grabbing this piece, holding on tight, swinging my leg over the lowest limb to hold my weight just long enough to reach for the next branch, and eventually making it up.

With a backpack strapped onto my shoulders, my knees always shook a little once I finally made it up and looked down below—my imagination playing a quick scene of how much it would hurt to slip and fall onto the grass below.

I took a breath and said, “Don’t think about it.”

From there, I carefully placed my feet in the trunk grooves that diverged into a mess of limbs going off in sky-bound directions. I tried my best to avoid finding my grip across the highways of ants going up and down the branches so as not to disturb their morning commutes and made my way to the spots I knew I could perch. Once I found a resting place, I unclipped the flap of my backpack and pulled out my purple Deluxe Talkgirl cassette tape recorder and a notebook. I rewound and fast-forwarded until I found a section on the tape to record that day’s report.

I clicked record, ensured the red dot illuminated, and held the extendable microphone to my mouth. After a chipper vocal instrumental, I started my intro:

Hello, and welcome back to the bird-watching show. I’m your host, Cheyanne. Today’s report comes to you live from the willow tree of the big backyard. It’s 9 o’clock, and boy, are there a whole lot of birds circling this morning. Bluebirds, red birds, and even a dove have already come across our sights. Don’t worry; we’ll describe each feather in detail to all of you listening at home.

I clicked stop. I rewound, I listened back, and I made my notes. I tried to draw the birds I saw in my notebook only to quit halfway through because wings are hard, and my eraser was so dry it smeared charcoal across my page. The whole thing was ruined. I wasn’t good at drawing.

I recorded another installment when a bird was in my sights, narrating the observation and sometimes even slipping into my best Australian accent in an attempt to embody the adventurous and fascinated persona of my hero, Steve Erwin.

In the surround sound of gently rustling leaves, I found refuge. I found hours of quiet. I found endless delight.