2 . I met the Man of the Trees in summer ten years ago, when I was visiting Uncle Jita.

Those were difficult times. People were cutting down our forest, and there was often flooding. Sometimes our water supply was dirty. When our pump(水泵)did have clean water, we had to wait in line for ages. When the pump wasn’t working, we had to walk five kilometres to the closest stream.

But I was happy. I was going to see my favorite uncle. When the day finally arrived, Dad drove me to Uncle Jita’s house and left. Once he saw me, Uncle Jita announced, “Tomorrow we’re going to explore a magical place. Here is my camera, Amy. You can take photos of what you see.”

The following day, we woke up and left early on a boat. The trip was exciting. But when we got off, there was ... nothing in front of us. “I don’t want to take pictures of this,” I complained.

Uncle laughed,“Start walking, Amy. I promise you’ll be surprised.” After some time, I could see the outline of a forest in the distance. A little closer, there was a man waving to us.

“That’s Kabir. The forest you see is his. He planted every single tree.” As we walked towards Kabir, Uncle explained that thirty years ago, the whole area was a wasteland. But one day Kabir decided to change all that and started planting trees. Thanks to him, part of the wasteland is now a paradise(天堂).

Uncle introduced me to Kabir, who had gray hair and a determined face. “Jita told me you like animals. Are you ready to see some?” he asked. “Of course!” I replied. We continued walking and soon were under the trees. I turned my head and was amazed at the difference between the two places. All because of the efforts of one man.

Like Uncle said, Kabir’s forest was magical. We saw deer, rhinos, and even tigers. During lunchtime, Kabir explained how, by planting trees, it was possible to stop the land from eroding(侵蚀).

Hearing this, I turned to my uncle, ^“I think we can plant trees too ”

In the years that followed, people in our village worked hard to carry out our plan.

When I was a child, my mother told my sister, who had a 10-inch very obvious scar (伤疤) on her arm, “Nancy, if you ignore the scar, other people will ignore it. It does not mean they will not notice it, but it means it will not matter to them if it doesn’t matter to you.”

It never occurred to me that something like this would happen to my son years later. Sending a child off to college can certainly be stressful for concerned parents. It was in 2018 that my son went off to college. He rarely contacted us. I couldn’t help asking about other aspects, which sometimes made him complain that I didn’t treat him as an adult.

To be honest, my son is excellent. Some of my friends always tell me that they admire my son’s characters and they hope their sons could have some of them.

Unexpectedly, it was 4 o’clock in the morning in 2020, when I received the phone call. “This is the emergency room calling and your son was just brought in with severe burns on his face, neck and arms. We have called for an aircraft and are going to fly him to the burn unit in Seattle.” Seattle was 350 miles from his college, so we knew immediately this was serious.

The doctor described the reason, which caused the burns. At 6 am, my son and his friends decided to barbecue hamburgers in the courtyard of their apartment. When they lit the charcoal, it burst into flames because they had sprayed too much gasoline. The flames caught my son’s shirt tail and shot from his waist to well over his head.

Fortunately, one of the boys who was quick-minded grasped my son and rolled him on the grass. While it saved his life, it was not in shape to save him from severe burns and terrible scars.

After he recovered from the treatments, the doctors told him they would not do plastic surgery for 6 months because it takes that long for the skin to stop shrinking and wrinkling.

The doctors suggested he return to college with scars of severe burns temporarily.

So I told him about Nancy’s childhood.

Edun did not want to go on a hike. She especially did not want to go on a long hike in the mountains that led to a tiny cabin (小木屋) with no electricity and no running water. She wanted to stay home reading a book instead while wrapped in a warm blanket.

“Ready?” Mom asked cheerfully after breakfast. Edun looked out the window and only saw rain, lots of it. “We should go another day,” Edun suggested. “Maybe a hundred years from now.” She worried she would get tired on the hike. She worried about getting bored at the dark cabin. Mom said it was time to stop worrying and get into the car.

Edun’s brother, Will, was waiting in the garage, who wore a camera around his neck. Will was four years older than Edun and had climbed many more mountains. He’d started hiking when he was two and loved it.

Because it was raining, Edun had to wear her rain pants, her rain hat, her rain jacket, and her waterproof boots. Her jacket had a rough material on the inside. She didn’t like how it felt against her skin.

After about half an hour’s drive, they parked at a trailhead (登山口). The rain had stopped but the ground was still dripping wet. “We’ll be there by afternoon!” Mom promised. The afternoon sounded far away.

Will identified a bird sitting on a nearby branch—“Fox sparrow!”—then he raced down the trail and was soon out of sight.

Edun rested under a pine tree. “You can’t force me to walk,” Edun said. “You’re right,” said her mom smilingly, standing under the tree, too, “But you will never know what may lie ahead and amaze us.”

Rivaldo was playing football from the age of 4. When he was 7, he joined a local football club. He attended the training regularly but never got a chance to play in matches. But the coach had faith in him. He told Rivaldo that he should focus on his training, and one day he would get the chance. Rivaldo had no other option but to continue training in the club. He was training very hard and focused on improving himself.

Even after two years in the club, he never played in a match. He was not even allowed to travel along with the team. One day their club had a charity match, where a famous footballer was a chief guest. While the team was planning to travel, one of the support staff who used to take care of kits got ill. So, they needed someone for this.

The coach thought this should be an opportunity for Rivaldo. So, he told him to travel with the team and take care of the kits. Other support staff objected to it, but he convinced them.

The team reached the stadium. There were a lot of crowds to witness the celebrity footballer. For Rivaldo, this is his first-time experience in the stadium. He was helping the other players with the kits for the pre-match training. The coach came for a chat with Rivaldo. He told Rivaldo, “You are playing today.”

Rivaldo, for a moment, got frozen and asked him why. He said, “One of the players from the team got injured while training. So, we are short of players. We need someone to be in the field to make it 11. But I know you are more than that. So, go and prove yourself”. There was resistance from the support staff. Luckily for Rivaldo, the coach, through the organizing committee, convinced Rivaldo’s team management to allow him to play.

When the match started, Rivaldo was running like a deer.

After the match, the celebrity footballer walked to Rivaldo.

As I stood in line waiting to cash out at a “pack your own” kind of store, where customers pack their items by themselves, I stared at the customer in front of me reading the magazines. She was young, but she already had a tired look to her, with head bent forwards—as if life had beaten her down too many times.

Her face looked pale from extreme tiredness. Her winter coat was thin and unbuttoned. The well-worn scarf around her throat probably did little to protect it from the cold weather. Her hands turning a few pages, were rough and red. When I looked down at her boots, I could see a small piece of a clear plastic bag partially visible through a hole in her left boot.

The items in her cart (购物车) included the cheapest cuts of meat and some things like rice and potatoes. There were also lots of noodles. Day-old bread, inexpensive soap, and tissues on sale—well, almost. In a far corner sat a little toy and a pretty dress that was 50 percent off.

She continued to look at the magazines as we waited, and more people lined up behind us. She finally took one out and turned it over several times, trying to find a price before finally turning to me.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she began in a shy and nervous tone. “But can you tell me how much this is? I forgot my glasses at home.”

“Of course” I said with a smile.

When I finally found the small print and told her, she shook her head and put it back.

“They’ve become so expensive, haven’t they?” I said sympathetically.

“Next!” The cashier called in a gentle voice before she could answer, and she moved forward to begin her transaction(交易)

When told the cost, the woman’s face paled.

I approached the cashier and whispered “Include her removed items in my bill, please.”