8/10 ~ The Tree

1995 USAIDS 5,000
(20th Anniversary Special)
Post #54:
(Excerpts from AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM STORY are attached to each picture.)

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Picture #132

[Both of us were suffering with colds, and I had yet to recover from the pain of Idaho. Still, I eagerly tasted the final-state challenge.  The ocean exhibited white waves, and the west wind whipped wildly across (what I found to be) the wickedly-winding roadway.  This was not the California of my dreams, though—I couldn’t get warm.  Thankfully, the road headed inland, directly into the Redwood National Forest.  A plethora of trees shielded me from the bellowing breeze, but where were the big redwoods I heard about all my life?]   (Picture from August 10, 1995)

Danton Coulson Very cool.

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Picture #135

[The lyrics of Vanessa Williams’s “Colors of the Wind” sawed into my heart:   “How tall can a sycamore grow?  If we cut them down, we’ll never know!”  Among the plentiful pines were stumps—massive stumps.  There were volumes of great tree stumps.  The next thing that blasted into my mind was the judge’s chambers I witnessed when my son was adopted.  I could answer the question of, “Where have all the redwoods gone?”  At least in some chambers, the beauty lives on.  It occurred to me that such vast waste was ironically opposite of this disease.  I couldn’t help but think that, “When the beautiful people I met have vanished, ugly AIDS will, in fact, dwell and swell.”  I prayed, “May the beauty of passing angels also live on—at least in the chambers of our hearts. Amen."] (Picture from August 10,1995)

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Picture #133

[DRUM ROLL … after many miles, the cut stumps stopped. Around the bend, there it stood, unannounced—the TREE.  One unlike any other I had witnessed, here was the tree I daydreamed about so often on a bicycle, the one I studied about in the second grade of our three-room school house in Leroy, Indiana.  Without remotely considering we might stumble across it even one time, here it rested: The Tree You Can Drive Through.  For the modest price of eight dollars, Carl Lebman steered through it. But wait, would I get charged on my bike? NO!] (Pamphlet from August 10, 1995--or from when I was in 3rd grade, from the looks of it, lol)

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Picture #134

[I maneuvered through the carved piece of history, stopping to pose, biking back around and through it time and again, halting to pray and, pausing to laugh, to scream, to rejoice, to dance on my bike, and, finally, to cry out in what others must have imagined to be my total insanity, “Carl Lebman, it’s the tree I dreamed about all my life—this is the TREE!” Only God dared create such joy; it was a dream-come-true from when I was a boy.  In-A-Godda-Da-Vida, baby—I get it!] (Picture from August 10, 1995)