Limp and lonely and lifeless, it hangs down the side of its cliff. Its naked roots clutch at the earth like fingers' that have lost thelr power to grasp at life.
Around it we stand and we look down on it. And it seems strange to look down on something to which we had always looked up.
It is The Tree.
If you have ever been in Moshava, you know The Tree. Just across the grounds and follow the path to the water. You pass the ravine and the road to the New Cliff. And then you find The Tree.
Or maybe it is that The Tree finds you.
You stop to look at The Tree. It sits on its own cliff and it looks over the Severn River. It guards the haverim. on the beach and in the water. It sees the sailboats glide past. It watches the sunsets and the night skies. But when you stop to look at it, it turns. And it looks at you.
Then you notice its arms are held out to you and you understand it is your first haver at Moshava. So you climb out on its strong roots and you settle yourself in its lap. For a while, you sit in silence-you and The Tree. And when at last you decide to leave, you go knowing that you will return.
Many times you visit it. Sometimes you come with your haverim. Then all of you sit on its arms and around it and you lose yourself in discussion. Momentarily you forget where you are. Yet, when you look upward, you see The Tree and you know it listens sympathetically.
Sometimes you bring your new group to the The Tree. You are a madrich and you want to impress your haverim. And hardly a week passes now but that one of them recalls, "Remember that time we sat at The Tree?"
Sometimes you come with a Certain One. For The Tree, alone, may know your secrets.
But most times you come alone to The Tree. Early in the morning you come to it. Late at night when you cannot sleep. After Moshava has closed and you are back in the city, suddenly you have such a longing to leave your routine. And you take the first lift you can get. And you come back to Moshava. Like a mad one, you run down the path to The Tree. And you sit upon its roots and rest against its trunk.
For a long time we knew it had to come down. Let the truth be known: There is no time in our memory when The Tree did not "have to come down." Knowing full well we would not. Each year its roots protruded more and more above the ground. Each year it extended farther over the Cliff.
If we stood on the beach below it and looked up, we could see its every vein straining at the earth around it.
In March it snowed. A heavy, unkind, bitter storm that seemed to seek revenge on the coming spring with which it struggled.
Limp and lonely and lifeless, it hangs down the side of its cliff. Its naked roots clutch at the earth like fingers that have lost their power to grasp at life.
Around it we stand and we look down on it. And it seems strange to look down on something to which we had always looked up.
It is The Tree.
Miriam Biderman, 1942