I climbed a tree today! It was terrifying!

This is the tree at my old college dorm that I used to climb very regularly to read & study & write terrible journal entries. 22 years and 50 pounds ago.

I did it because they're tearing down my old dorm and I wanted to say hello to the tree one more time.

Like, hoisting yourself 7 feet off the ground seems a lot more scary when you've let yourself get out of easy pull-up shape and are extremely aware your body is no longer basically made out of bouncy gummy bear material

So jealous of 18-year-old me who could just swing up into that tree like it was nothing, sit nonchalantly up there with a book bag, then jump out of it like the ground was mushy and soft

Oh and because I was a dork in the 90s with half-baked pagan notions who really liked a tree, I've had this fallen branch from that tree since 1997. I always meant to carve it into some kind of wand.