The meadow is surrounded by trees. But in the middle there stands a lone oak, its thick trunk like a tower shooting up into the sky, and its lower boughs laden with deep-green leaves and bending softly down.
You reach up to a bough stretching out above you—and are able to lift yourself onto it. Grabbing hold of the branches sticking out, you manage to make your way along the bough until another one is within reach overhead. Feeling an urge to climb higher still, you keep grabbing the tree’s boughs in such a manner.
But suddenly you lose your grip and your balance, and fear grips you as you fall. You drop onto a cluster of twigs and leaves appearing below. From there you tumble down through a series of rubbery branches, like ferns catching and releasing you with their fingers—and finally land among herbs and flowers. Lying on your back you look up into a clear sky with some scattered clouds. The sun is hurrying towards the west. The oak’s waving foliage is calling you from surprisingly far away. You promptly decide to try again, and head back to the bending boughs.
Soon you are climbing once more, finding your footing and learning as you go. After a while the boughs seem to be retreating, and you are forced to make your way towards the interior of the oak’s greenery. Before long its bole appears as a wall in front of you. You are surprised to find short rods sticking out and placed diagonally at even intervals around it. You chance stepping on one, then the next, and find that you can climb these steps as on a spiral staircase of great circumference—as long as you keep a steady pace to not lose your balance. For this purpose you convince yourself that if you fell, you would probably fall softly and unharmed as before. You walk like this for quite some time, while to your astonishment the bole never seems to diminish in girth.
The sky with its sun isn’t visible through the dark leaves. And although you’re climbing ever upward, the brightness of the day slowly gives way to enveloping shadows. At length, the thickness of the oak’s torso slowly decreases, while still being so great that three men could not reach around it.
Then you notice an obstacle at some distance above you, seemingly square in shape. When you reach it from below, you see that it’s a platform made of wood and penetrated by the tree trunk. But the encircling rods continue upward as if the climber could mysteriously glide through this barrier. Inspecting the platform further, you see that there is indeed a trapdoor right above. However, it’s difficult standing in place and looking up in this way, and you feel your balance failing. Your hand desperately reaches for something to hold—and finds one of several metal handles mounted in the trapdoor itself. Steadying yourself, you grab hold of another handle with your other hand, and try pushing the door up. It swings open effortlessly, almost lifting you up with it, and before you know it you land on the floor of a small square house.
You’re lying on the floor looking up, and see the tree continuing upward as before. This house is built around the trunk, but you realize that it has no roof. Still you cannot see the end of the tree’s crown; it just keeps rising up into the distance above. But the foliage allows you to see the night sky around it—and it is indeed night now, a deep blue night with pale stars peering out one by one as you’re looking.