The Door In The Tree

The Door In The Tree

Before I get started I want to tell you a bit about me. My name is Tucker Lahriue and I was born and raised in a little town called Thompson Pass. Now, don’t look for it on a map…you ain’t goin’ to find it. It is small and hidden at the end of a box canyon in the mountains of Tennessee. I grew up there, went to school, a single- room schoolhouse with just four students, there and lived part of my life there until I moved away and went to a big city in Alabama. Anyway, one thing I like doing was hunting in the mountains around there. I usually caught my limit and left a few for the other guys, (That was the decent thing to do.)

I went out once when I was something around 15. Young,  but I was eager to get my first deer. I was out about three days when I happened on this old elm tree. It must have been old. It took a lot of time just to walk around the truck so, tired as I was, I sat down for a meal of dried pork I brought with me when I saw it, a scar on the tree about three feet wide and six feet tall and it was a perfect rectangle. Strange,  but I thought little of it until I saw a strap of leather sticking out of the ground at the root of the tree. It was old…I mean really old. I pulled it up and found a leather bag fastened to it. I opened it and found a scroll written on some yellow paper. I was afraid to touch but something told me I had to read it. So, I pulled it out, sat down and started to read it.

It was written by a man named Thomas Jefferson. No, not THAT Jefferson;  but a man who lived in the area who people knew about and talked about but no one ever seen. All I knew was the he could and outdid out Davy Crockett in pretty much everything. The date on the document was January 16^th, 1895.

I started reading it and once I finished I knew that I had to tell everyone about it. So, here it is in his own words.

“I started out a normal person. I lived in a house in a small town. I was married, worked in a store and stayed the pure Christian life. One day a voice in my head told me that that I needed to be closer to nature so I quit my job, left my family and went out to wander and learn about the world around me.

I must have been up in those woods pertnear 20 years if you can go by the changes in the seasons.

I hated poachers. When I caught one I didn’t hurt them. That wouldn’t be the Christian thing to do despite the fact that they were killing just for the fun of it. I took them tied to a tree and sent a pigeon back to have someone come and arrest them. Me, I never killed any animals myself. I lived off of the plants of the forest and if I needed a tree for shelter of a fire on a winter night I made it a point to always plant a new one in its place.

I think I was getting  to be about 45 years old when I was walking on Fireback Mountain and I saw the damnest thing…a tree with a door in the trunk and it weren’t no ordinary door. It looked like it was a black wood…strange since it was in the trunk of an old elm…and it was surrounded by a silver frame.

Now, I wasn’t a busybody. I leave that job to the ladies, if you can call them that, back in town but when you see something like that you have to know what kind of person would live in a tree and what kind of a person would have such a valuable door in the middle of nowhere.

I yelled out loud to see if anyone would come and see what all the noise was about. I knew that whoever lived there might come out with a gun and start shooting but I was a friendly type person and I could usually talk my way out of things but just in case I was ready to duck down behind an old stump that was nearby and try talking from there. I yelled a couple of times with no answer so I knocked on the door and it swung open.

When I stepped in the door, it closed behind me and I saw two staircases and a hall to a big room. I don’t know how but it was bigger inside that it was outside.

One of the staircases head up, the other down and the room down the hall seemed to have a big party going on. The thing was the stairs going down and the hallway to the room was blocked. I started up the stairs…there was absolutely no sense standing in a small room like that when there was somewhere I could go.

Just then a voice came to me telling that they were waiting for me at the top of the steps. “What about those other ways,” I asked.

“The one going down is for those who do not care about the suffering of others,” it said, “The room is for those who care but did not do anything about the pain they inflected. Neither place is meant for you.”

I walked up the steps. It was a long walk but, funny, the more I walked the less pain I felt. My arms and legs stopped hurting, I could breathe easy and I didn’t feel my heart beat every time I took a step. By the time I reached the top I was feeling pretty good…actually I felt like a twenty year old again.

I turned at the top of the steps and there was a man standing behind me. He had long brown hair and a beard but he was dressed in jeans and hunter’s vest. “Thomas,” He said, “do not be afraid but look at the base of tree.”

I looked and saw my body being carried away by three hunters.

“Thomas,” He continued, “You have lived your life in a way that very few do. You have helped those in pain. You have never caused anyone pain, you have never killed and if you needed anything always made sure that life continued even after you had left. That is the way that My Father and I wanted the Earth to be. Because of that you will be rewarded.”

He took my hand a led me up some more stairs and we were gone. I wanted to come back and write my story so that others may learn from it and He allowed me to do so just one time so if you find this please share it with as many others as you can.”

That was all that he wrote and like I said I found it a few years ago and I have been sharing it since. Now, I know that you aren’t going to believe me so if you want I will show you the scroll…all you have to do is ask. I carry it with me everywhere I go…right next to my bible and picture of Christ and as for that…that is all I am going to say.