![]() ![]() Man too needs the alternation of permanence and change, order and variety. ![]() The child climbing birch trees goes up to come down and completes the cycle of a natural rhythm. To get away from the earth for a while does not mean escape but transcendence, the rejuvenation of leisure and the refreshment of play. At such moments a wise man, learning the lesson from his childhood, will remember "I'd like to get away from earth awhile/And then come back to it and begin over." That is, work needs to be balanced with play, daily routine needs to be combined with festive social occasions, variety and contrast are essential for the life of the spirit. In the middle of things, in the middle of life, in the middle of a journey the heaviness and monotony of toil weary the soul as the "noon-day demon" of world weariness and ennui stifle lightheartedness and mirth. ![]() The lesson it teaches is the art of going up and coming down, the rhythm of work and play, first the climbing and then the sliding. ![]() In middle age a man feels the weight of the world depriving him of joy: "It's when I'm weary of considerations,/ And life is too much like a pathless/ Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs/ Broken across it, and one is weeping/ From a twig's having lashed across it open." But he remembers that the swinging of birches is a movement of alternations and natural transitions. This happy memory from childhood on the art of swinging birches provides a practical wisdom that teaches the art of living. He can no longer climb up and down birch trees with the agility of a boy, and he cannot return to the past however, he can learn from the past to live in the present. The duties, responsibilities, sorrows, and injustices of life have taken their toll as the joy of childhood has diminished and the weariness of the world has increased. This happy recollection of pure fun has faded into the past as the narrator in his adulthood suffers the burdens of the human condition that oppress the spirit. To be in a rush to climb to the top, to go head first, or to race hastily to the bottom spoil the fun with foolish risks and serious hazards. He remembers all the fun a boy enjoyed on such winter days when he mastered the art of swinging on birches, a talent that required him to climb up the tree step by step from branch to branch with caution and poise - "With the same pains you use to fill a cup/ Up to the brim, and even above the brim." He acquired the skill of beginning to slide slowly and "not launching out too soon/ And so not carrying the tree away/ Clear to the ground." The swinging of birches involves dangers and risks that demand attention and care. Yet he favors another explanation: "I should prefer to have some boy bend them/ As he went out to fetch the cows - /Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, /Whose only play was what he found himself, /Summer or winter, and could play alone." He knows the real reason for the bending of the birches, the ice storms that weigh upon the tree to form crystal shells that then melt and shatter like broken glass. Thinking back upon a winter's day in New England, a man in the middle of life beholds the bent limbs of a birch tree that recalls the fondest of childhood memories, the delight of climbing up the tree and sliding down the bent branches again and again. ![]()
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