“Tree of Life,” by Uma Chirkova, 18, of Newbury, from the YWP media library.Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at [email protected]; (802) 324-9538. To a bird or a squirrel, a tree is nothing short of a home; to a child, a tree acts as a playground and a hideout, a stately protector and a sheltering provider of comfort — it is a friend. This week’s featured writer, Quinn Brubaker of Shelburne, eulogizes the memory of a once-revered sidewalk companion now felled, and cut down with it, a little piece of the early childhood it helped shape.The tree that defines meQuinn Brubaker, 13, ShelburneWhen I was little, we lived in Philly. Seven hours from where we live now, eight counting the timeallotted for rest stops. And a little way down the sidewalk from our house was this tree.At that time, I was anywhere between ages 2 and 5, I think. I was young. Really young. Barely more than a toddler.Anyway, I would get upset sometimes. Angry at my brother, frustrated with my cousin, et cetera — mostly petty, little-kid stuff. I think I felt smothered in a way because we lived so close to all our relatives back then and there wasn’;t a lot of breathing room for me, and that’;s always been something I care about: taking breaks. So, the tree. I would run to it when I got in one of my moods. I don’t know why. I guess my little self just felt the impulse to run, and I was drawn to the tree. I would go up to that tree and climb it, and sit up there until I felt like I could come back down. Almost every time, I turned to it. I don’t know why I felt so drawn to it. This old, gnarly tree with its knotted bark and coarse roots, stooped low enough for a little kid to climb, just felt so comforting to me.We moved away when I was 5, all the way up to Vermont, which is where we are now, of course. We visit family back in Philly sometimes, and I requested to stop by our old house recently, just to see if that tree — my tree — was still there.It wasn’t.A stump was in the place where the old tree used to stand, hunched over but proud, twisted butbeautiful in its own way.My amazing tree — the tree that had given me an escape when I most needed it — was gone.This is deeply personal to me. I just miss it. I miss the solace of me and my tree amid the hustle and bustle of Chestnut Hill. Here in Vermont, there are tons of trees. Forests. I tried to find another tree to talk to, to love, to hold, and yet, nothing.My tree is irreplaceable.I wrote this as an ode to it, as the holiday season comes and goes, even if it seems silly — so that I never forget what that tree did for me.Read the story on VTDigger here: Young Writers Project: ‘The tree that defines me’.