The Porcupine Tree

This is a story from my childhood that I tell to the boys sometimes before bed.  It's one of their favorites.

A long time ago when I was little and I lived at Grammie Munchkin's old house up in New Hampshire there was a tree called the porcupine tree.  We called it the porcupine tree because sometimes we would see a porcupine sitting up in the top at night.

We would come home sometimes in the dark after the sun went to bed.  As the car came up the driveway, the headlights would shine in the backyard.  Sometimes, there was a porcupine in the backyard and when he saw the lights, he would run as fast as he could--which was not very fast--over to this little hemlock tree.  He would climb up the tree all the way to the tippity top to a place where there weren't many branches and we could see him sitting up there.

My brother also like to climb the porcupine tree.  He would climb up to that same spot at the tippity top where there weren't many branches and look out.  I had a favorite climbing tree which was not far away down the hill by the rope swing behind the brush pile toward the swamp.  It was also a hemlock tree and I would climb near the top to a place where I could sit comfortably and look out and see my brother sitting up in the porcupine tree.

I would sometimes pretend that I was in a castle watchtower or some other place where it was my critical duty to guard the backyard from the evil that was trying to penetrate it.  In reality, there was very little evil trying to penetrate our backyard, so that game didn't last long.

Truth be told, all the fun was in getting up to the top of our climbing trees and not in the fabricated drama.  I was not made for drama.  By the time I got to my sitting spot I'd had my fun and the game was all but over.