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Article: THE TREE THAT GAVE FLIGHT TO A DREAM.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- American Forests
- Article date:
- January 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 American Forests. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the first decades of the last century, a spirited young girl growing up in her grandparents' farmhouse in Kansas loved to sit at her bedroom window and look out at the trees. She especially loved the sugar maple and linden that grew in the front yard.
To her imaginative mind, these weren't just any trees; they were Philemon and Baucis--the couple in Ovid's Metamorphoses whom the god Jupiter turned into an oak and a linden after their deaths so their branches might be entwined forever.
In my mind's eye I picture young Amelia Earhart in her bedroom window studying those trees, dreaming, watching as the propeller-shaped maple seeds gracefully winged ...