We tell made-up stories to our children each night, and each night a different and new one. Challenging.

I was given the gem of an idea for a story about a boy and a paper airplane he could ride in from Peter Chapman, and old friend who used to work for the Canadian Friends Service Committee – the international aid arm of the Society of Friends (Quakers). He gave me photo work overseas in several locales and we have kept in touch over the years.

I have modified Peter’s story somewhat to that of a boy finding a magic piece of paper in the ditch beside a road while cleaning up on a special school outing on Earth day. He tucked the paper in his pocket forgetting it was there until one day outside under his thinking tree, he discovers it and finds that it has pre-folded lines on it. On folding along the lines, the airplane, barely two inches long, suddenly grows in size large enough to fit him and has a glass bubble atop it in which the boy can sit and pilot the craft.

Each Saturday, the boy tells his parents what he’s up to and packs himself a lunch and sippy cup and goes out to the thinking tree to fold the airplane and fly off for an adventure. The boy (Owen knows its him), has been to the Great Wall of China, the North Pole, the Kalahari Desert, Paris… all over the world. Last night he went to Borneo and met an extraordinary creature.

After alighting from his plane in the Cloud Forest there, the boy met a small Mouse Deer who guided him through the rainforest, showing him all sorts of interesting things. The Mouse Deer eventually led him to a great tree and suggested he climb it to the very top where it drifted into the clouds above. To the boy’s surprize, after a very long and arduous climb, he saw sitting at the very apex of the tree an Old man of the Forest, the King of the Orang Utans. They had a solemn and quiet discussion on many subjects including why the sky is blue.

The Old Man of the Forest was very wise and in the end gave the boy a seed from one of the magical trees in the Bornean forest to plant back home when he returned. This the boy did and with some plant growth hormone from his mother’s garden shed, it grew into a great tall leafy tree up into and through the clouds. It had steps and handholds on it and the boy and his parents and sister climbed to the top above the clouds only to find the Old Man of the Forest there, who would answer any three questions the boy could think of. Owen suggested that the boy ask the Old Man of the Forest where the other Orang Utans were and why were there so few in the world (how did he remember this?). After bidding the Old man a quiet good night, the family climbed back down and set off across their field and back to their house. After a few steps the boy turned around and was not at all surprized to see that the Great Tree had shrunk back down to a seedling.

The next day (the next night’s story), the boy applied again his mother’s plant mixture, but this time nothing happened. The family stood there, disappointed, until the boy remembered that it grew while they weren’t watching and so they started to walk back to the house and then turned back after a few steps to find it grown again. They climbed again to the very stop and the King of the Orang Utans was there still, calmly sitting and watching them approach. The King said, in his low voice, that tonight would be the last night he would be with them to answer 3 questions, for he had to get back to his family and tribe in Borneo and see how things were there. The boy asked a couple of questions, like would he get dessert tomorrow night even if he didn’t eat his dinner (which made the King chuckle in a fluffing, harumphy sort of way). But for the last question the boy thought long and hard. He at last looked up at the Old Man of the Forest and asked him the Meaning of Love. This made the King raise is eyebrows (“yes, even Orang Utans have eyebrows Owen”) and declare that to be a very fine question indeed. The King paused for a long time, sometimes looking up in the sky like he was listening to someone and sometimes tilting his head and looking at his toes. Eventually, his deep voice sounded and he said to the boy: The Meaning of Love is in everything you see. The boy looked at his family and felt love, he looked at the clouds and felt love, he looked at the tree beneath him and felt love – he even looked at the King and felt love. And the boy realized that Love was the reason for living, for being. The boy understood the Old Man of the Forest and after a pause and a meeting of the eye, he and his family started down the tree again. The boy paused and looked back and saw the King of the Orang Utans slowly levitate into the air higher and higher, still in his sitting position, until he was such a tiny speck that the boy could no longer distinguish him from anything.

The tree, of course, had shrunk again to a small seedling when they set off for the house. But it never did grow to the same height again and assumed a normal tree height and eventually blended in with the other trees growing on the property. But the boy could always pick it out.