Water Steps Read Online Free PDF

go,” Pep cheered. They called Girl Scouts “Girl Guides” in Ireland. Who knows why? It’s not like we go about guiding people through the woods or something. Not that I couldn’t do a great job of that myself. I know what side of the tree moss grows on and how to get my bearings from the stars in a clearing.
    I know my way around the woods. With nothing but their leaves, I can name over fifty different kinds
of trees even this far from home. I had like twenty of them named by the time I reached this mega cool clearing with a “God’s hand” stream of light reaching down into it—one of those bright streaks of sunlight shooting down from a cloud that looks like God’s just reaching to give old nature a good pat on the ground for looking so gosh darn pretty.
    Had me staring at the rocks looking all craggy, the woodland violets just getting ready to bloom, and the wild strawberries shooting out their tiny white blossoms. Add the blackcap bushes along the rim, and that clearing had all the fixings for a good hideaway. I stepped into the sunlight and shazam , I realized God just might have been pointing that clearing out to me, because there on the far side stood the biggest spread-your-limbs-wide-best-thing-for-a-tree-fort old oak I had ever seen. Even had a stubby old pine tree too small to grow in that grand oak’s shade right up close, so I could use it like a ladder to reach the lowest branch.
    A monkey swing here, a good stretching climb there, and ta-da , I stood on a branch big enough to hold a house. Standing in that tree, looking over that clearing, I realized that silly old lake could fill up with rain for a year and still not overflow enough to reach me there. I could picture the floorboards under
my feet, a rope railing between those two peace sign branches to the northwest, a hammock between the two goalpost branches to the southeast, a nice chair up against the trunk—a sweet little tree-fort-away-from-tree-fort kind of place. Now this was my kind of vacation house.
    Then I heard a noise, a glug, glug, swoop, swoop . Oh no, not water. Turning around, I realized this fantastic tree had a view. I’d walked myself right up to a low bluff overlooking the lake. Girl Guide, my bum !
    I couldn’t even steer clear of the one thing I wanted to avoid.
    Spinning around to make my escape, I saw that sunlight stretching into the clearing, touching down on those violets, imagined my little hammock swinging in the breeze. Ah, what could that stupid old lake do to me this far up, anyway?
    Didn’t even give my mind a chance to think about it, just headed back to the house to see what I could scare up to get started on my new fort.
    A quick search of the old stone shed turned up a few good boards. Hit up Pep’s traveling tool kit for twine. Borrowed rope from the tarp on the woodpile. Then I used an old blanket for the hammock. By lunch, I had the foundation for a pretty good tree fort.

    I couldn’t talk about anything else over grilled cheese and tomato soup. Mem and Pep nodded and smiled. During a sandwich-dipping break, Pep asked, “And did you ask the tree for permission to go building that fort?”
    I remembered Pep standing below the tree in our backyard, praying before he lashed down the first board of the fort he built for me. Just five at the time, I figured trees could be like people. Why not? I had thought the same thing about the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny.
    Now, I wondered why Pep still talked about such things. Didn’t he know I was too old to believe that stuff? Then again, those stories were the strongest thing I had in common with Mem and Pep. Except for the water steps. And I’d rather forget all about them.
    I put my sandwich down, feeling kind of guilty for forgetting our tree spirit tradition. Felt almost like the time I forgot to tell him about career day at school last year. Everybody had a mem or pep come to talk about