LITTLE TREE IS HOME AGAIN

excerpts from THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE, Forest Carter

In his autobiography, Forest Carter tells of his childhood.  He was in a Christian Boarding School for some time and was bereft.  The following excerpts are his reaction to coming home to his grandparents and his Cherokee mountain home after this unhappy time.

"I set down and pulled off my shoes, ' I reckined I couldn't feel the trail, Granpa,' I said.  The ground felt warm and run up through my legs and over my body.  Granpa laughed....  He pulled off his shoes...As we come up the trail....Pine boughs swept down over the trail and felt my face, and run theirselves over me.  Granpa said they was wanting to make sure it was me....The spring branch slapped me light, and run over my head and felt me - and sung louder and louder....The wind picked up...it was singing in the pines and would tell everything in the mountains that I was home...Granma run down the mountain.  She run into the spring branch and dived at me, and we rolled, splashing and hollering and crying some, I reckon.....The wind sung along with me and squirrels and 'coons and birds come out on tree limbs to watch and holler at me as I passed......I laid on the ground a long time and talked to the sleepy trees, and listened to the wind....The pines whispered and the wind picked up, and they commenced to sing,'Little Tree is home...Little Tree is home! Listen to our song!  Little Tree is home!  Little Tree is with us!  Little Tree is home!...my spirit didn't hurt anymore."