Under the Pines

Chapter: Under the Pines

From the Memoir – Legacy Miles

I really was afraid it was going to snap—and that I was going to explode when I hit the ground.

I was standing in the backyard, looking up at the tops of the pine trees. From one of the highest limbs, all the way to one of the lowest, there it was—a zipline stretched taut like a lifeline through memory. And at the end of it, a milk crate.

That crate was my chariot.

No shirt. No shoes. Just a diaper.

The long-arm gang—my older brother and his crew—thought it would be hilarious to send me down the zipline like a test dummy. So they stuffed me in and gave me a shove.

I started to glide. And that’s when it hit me.

The fear.

The weightlessness.

The silence before the rush.

I looked up, and the clouds seemed to slow. Everything did. The wind moved softer. Time bent. And in that suspended moment, I thought, Is this the last thing I’ll ever see?

Then came the sound—the high-pitched whine of metal on metal. A zipline sings louder the faster you go. The hum builds. The pitch sharpens. You know you’re flying when you stop hearing yourself breathe.

Then—

Whiplash. Stop. Silence.

The milk crate slammed into the brake, and I didn’t die.

I just… arrived.

But part of me stayed in that tree line.

Because that backyard was more than a place. It was my world.

It was where I launched rotten tomatoes over the fence in full-scale battles with Tommy Moore. Where I tiptoed into the neighbor’s yard to pick pears so ripe they made my stomach ache. It was where Dad let me loose in the blue double-speed go-kart, knowing full well the only thing protecting me from disaster was a 2x4 lashed across the front—and some divine grace.

And when the 2x4 snapped, we fixed it.

Two ratchets. A mission. Back on the road.

Those memories?

You couldn’t buy them from me for a million dollars.

Because in that backyard, under the eternal umbrella of pine trees, I never had to explain who I was.

I didn’t have to prove anything.

I just belonged.

And maybe that’s why, even now,

I walk into uncertain places

knowing the 2x4 might hold,

that something will catch me,

that joy can still live under the trees.